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In celebration of our recent release of Lending Club’s new investor tools, we are hosting our second twitter contest! …and this time, it is Lending Club t-shirt galore:  1 of every 10 entries will win a nifty Lending Club t-shirt + $50 new investor account bonus.  It’s that easy.

From Monday, November 2 through Sunday, November 15, 2009, we will give away 1 Lending Club t-shirt for every 10 entries each day.  Each winner also gets a $50 new investor account bonus while all participants get a $25 new investor account bonus.

What's an entry? Well, very simple:
Just Follow @LendingClub and tweet about this contest.
Tweet this: RT @LendingClub Twitter Contest: 2 Weeks of Blissful Giveaways! Follow @LendingClub + RT 2 win DETAILS: http://ow.ly/ySq4

For an extra entry!
Every day at 8am PT (11am ET), @LendingClub will tweet about a loan being funded by the community on our site.  Search for the loan here and simply tweet a link to it for an extra chance to win.

For example:
We tweet: "Find a loan from someone in CT, who wants to repair house before winter"
You tweet: “Check out this loan @LendingClub: Doing repairs to house before winter http://bit.ly/20qHHR"

This means 1 in 5 chances to get your t-shirt + $50! And everyone wins: our borrowers get their loans tweet'd and you will likely get a t-shirt for it.

We will take entries from 8am PT to 7:50am PT the next day, and will announce the winner at 7:55am PT (10am ET) the following day.

Happy tweeting!
@RobGarciaSJ

Account bonus do not apply to existing accounts and cannot be combined with other offers.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

11/2 Tweet> Find&Tweet loan from borrower in Orlando, FL who wants to pay off BofA loan http://ow.ly/ykgK RT 2 win
WINNER(s): @silvermill @coffeehouserdr @dangnat

11/3 Tweet> Find&Tweet loan from borrower in Seattle, WA works at MSFT and wants to pay off tax bill http://ow.ly/ySwh

Lending Club continues to be a leading financial innovator.

This time, we are pleased to present a completely new investor experience, giving you the tools that make it fast and easy for you to create diversified portfolios of Notes.   You can now create an investment order in seconds without sacrificing control, in 3 different ways:

1) Follow a predefined investment strategy

2) Target a specific interest rate

3) Filter, review and select notes individually

You now have the ability to use more than 25 filters to help you refine your investment strategy.  You can also save these filters, corresponding to your investment strategies, to reuse in the future.

Interested in learning more about these new tools? 
Watch a video overview here>>>

We hope you enjoy using the new tools at Lending Club.  Lending Club notes are offered by prospectus filed with the SEC.   If you have any questions call Investor Services at 1-866-811-9225, or send an email to investing@lendingclub.com.

Enjoy!
Rob

We are delighted to present a new statistics section now available here with fascinating data on our financial community, investment performance and loan details.

Personally, I am excited to see data that confirms the high performance and responsible behavior of our community, in sharp contrast with the traditional banking sector:

• Our borrowers are very creditworthy, with a 724 average FICO® score
• Our investor community enjoys a solid 9.66% average net annualized return after fees and defaults
• 88.5% of our investors earn returns of 6% or more
• The best performing credit grades are E and D loans, with 10.88% and 9.93% net annualized returns respectively
• Lending Club has kept defaults to a low 3.16% annualized default rate since inception

Another number that I get particularly excited about is that Lending Club has paid more than $4.1mm in interest to our investors to date!  Notes are offered by prospectus.

Want to hear more stats?  Please join Patrick Gannon, Senior Vice President of Investor Services, and Sam Kasle, Director of Investor Marketing, for the unveiling of Lending Club's new Statistics section Thursday at 4:00pm PDT (7:00 PM PDT).

The webcast will cover topics such as returns by loan grade, returns by amount invested, and defaults by loan type.  After the presentation there will be ample time for an in depth Q&A.

Unveiling the New Statistics Section >>>
Register now for this webcast on
Thursday, October 22th, 2009
4:00 pm PDT (7:00 pm EDT)

Space is limited to 150 attendees, so reserve your spot now.

Enjoy!

Rob
@RobGarciaSJ

Yesterday morning our CEO, Renaud Laplanche, appeared on Fox Business News and discussed how Lending Club is leading the charge in a rapidly growing peer-to-peer lending space.

Check out Renaud on Fox Business News >>

We all know peer-to-peer lending is a fast growing alternative for those looking for a personal loan. Lending Club offers an easy, confidential and secure way of getting a loan without involving your bank.

On the investors side, Lending Club notes average 9.66% net annualized returns. Lending Club notes are offered by prospectus filed with the SEC.

My favorite part of the interview was when Renaud points out that Lending Club is not an option for those with weak credit histories, but instead, Lending Club is an alternative for creditworthy borrowers. That is, smart borrowers looking to get rates that are often lower than those offered by banks or credit card companies.

Enjoy the interview!

Rob

Follow me on Twitter

At Lending Club, we are ecstatic about the possibilities of participating in the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive 2010 conference in Austin (SXSW).

We are planning to host 2 power-packed sessions and ask for your vote via the crowdsourced 2010 SXSW PanelPicker to ensure these 2 fantastic panels make it to the final program:

Session 1: Banking 2.0: Financial Services Driven by People & Emerging Technologies

We’ll be talking about the many changes in the Banking industry brought by the emergence of people and technology-driven financial products: personal finance management, p2p lending, microfinance, credit score tracking, stock picking communities, mobile banking, and more.

We have assembled an all-star team so far (all confirmed):

Aaron Patzer, CEO of Mint.com
Arkadi Kuhlman, CEO of INGDirect
Ken Lin, CEO of CreditKarma
Marc Hedlud, Co-founder of Wesabe
Mike Ferrari, Co-founder of SmartyPig
And yours truly, Rob Garcia, Director of Product Strategy at Lending Club

We have also contacted our friends at USAA, WeSeed, Billeo, Obopay, Zecco and Geezeo to join us. With so many great names, we may need to do more than 1 session!

Session 2: The rise of P2P Lending & Microlending in the US

In this panel, we’ll discuss how P2P Lending and Microfinance are becoming the smart and obvious choices to finance and invest in fellow Americans. We have extended invitations to Kiva, Microplace, ACCION USA and several other organizations that will make this panel a must-see.

Voting ends this Friday, September 4 at 11:59 CST. Thanks in advance for your support. Vote, vote, vote!

@RobGarciaSJ