Dear Lending Club Members,
As more of you are saying “no” to credit cards and are choosing the path of responsible credit, and as more investors look for higher returns after last year’s devastating stock market performance, our financial community is showing better results than ever.
This week we are releasing new data showing strong growth among both Lending Club investors and loan originations:
- From January 1st to May 31st 2009:
- 60% growth in total loans issued by Lending Club, from $25M to $40M
- 70% growth in total Lending Club membership from 82,000 to 140,000
- 72% growth in loan applications, from $212M to $365M
- The average net annualized return earned by Lending Club investors since June 2007 grew from 9.05% as of December 18, 2008 (as reported by analyst firm Javelin Research at that time) to 9.90% as of today.
These excellent results demonstrate the responsible behavior of our community of investors and borrowers and show that in the long run, sound underwriting and cautious investment beat the most aggressive strategies.
Better Rates, Together.
Renaud
On Tuesday evening, we made a set of scheduled enhancements to our Web site like we do every month. On Wednesday, the combination of the site enhancements and record-setting levels of activity on certain pages, led to issues that prevented some pages from loading for part of the day.
We know that some customers visiting our Web site on Wednesday either could not access their account or had difficulties with certain areas of the site. We immediately focused our efforts on addressing the issues and believe we have resolved them. I just want to note that our Web site and customer data have remained fully secure and all account details for both borrowers and investors were fully updated on schedule.
As the popularity of Lending Club continues to grow, I want you to know that we are completely focused on giving consistent, anytime access to the lending platform and your account information.
If you were affected by this issue yesterday, I would like to sincerely apologize. Thank you for your continued support.
Best,
Renaud
Today, we’re happy to announce that our securities filing has been cleared by the great Commonwealth of Virginia, a.k.a. the “Old Dominion” and the “Mother of Presidents”. We’re excited to kick the week off with this full opening of our social lending platform to investors in the 12th largest state in the Union, with a population of 7.7M.
The map is filling in…

Onward and upward!
Four weeks after completing our federal registration with the SEC, we are ecstatic to announce that the wonderfully creative and sunny state of California has decided to promote financial innovation at the time the country and the state need it the most, and cleared our securities filing this morning. As residents of the state dubbed in its early history as “Cornucopia of the World”, Californians can now invest in loans made to Lending Club members.
Since California hosts more than 25% of our lender members, we thought we’d edit our orange map to make that clear:

More from our feed soon…
We are happy to report 2 more state clearances came through last week, with South Carolina and Idaho joining the ranks of "Orange" states (i.e., states where Lending Club’s offering has been cleared).
What a perfect opportunity to mention that Idaho is home of the deepest river gorge in North America (Hells Canyon - 7,900 ft deep) and South Carolina saw the first engagement of the American Civil War at Fort Sumter in 1861. Learn more about Idaho and South Carolina at inidaho.com/Fun_Facts_List.asp and thingstodo.com/states/SC/facts.htm.
This brings the total tally to 23 states, namely Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Hawaii, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
See below our updated states map:

More to come…
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