LendingClub.com Leads Industry with Better Rates for Borrowers

SUNNYVALE, CA – December 13, 2007 – Caught in the wake of the credit crisis, people in every community across America are looking for alternatives to traditional banks and credit institutions to help meet their financial needs. Lending Club, the rapidly growing affinity-based social lending network that launched its people-to-people lending services six months ago to facilitate personal loans based on affinities or an individual's social connections, today announced its availability to lenders and borrowers in all 50 states. For the first time, everyone nationwide can use Lending Club's P2P lending services and enjoy better interest rates than those offered by traditional banks or credit cards.

"We believe an affinity-based model enables people to get better rates by leveraging their existing associations and social connections. All early indicators suggest that this approach is succeeding: We have the lowest rates available to borrowers and the best average returns for lenders in the industry, which is made possible by lower defaults" said Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club. "Today, we're extending this model across all 50 states, so people can connect online, build trust and gain financial benefit on both sides of the lending and borrowing equation."

Over the course of the last six months, LendingClub.com lenders have earned an average 12.2 percent annualized return after fees and losses, and defaults on the loans have remained under one percent, which is attributed to the sense of community and trust inherent in the existing connections between members, such as their online social networks, alumni associations, organizations, geography and credit profiles.

LendingClub.com members have loaned and borrowed more than $3.5 million within the network, growing 100 percent monthly since it launched six months ago. In response to this rapidly increasing demand, Lending Club is expanding today to all 50 states and is now available at www.lendingclub.com, on social networking site Facebook and through partnerships with top university alumni associations.

To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch™, which looks at factors such as where people went to school, where they grew up, what they do for a living and their network associations. LendingMatch is the fastest way to build diversified portfolios based on these affinities and ensure the creditworthiness of each borrower.

LendingClub.com is open to individual borrowers with credit scores at or above 640 and a debt-to-income ratio of 30 percent or less. Using LendingClub.com, borrowers can apply for personal loans of $500 to $25,000 to be funded by one or many individual lenders. Lending Club handles user authentication, bank account verification, credit checking, credit reporting, funds transfers and collections.

And here we are… Lending Club is finally available in California! Well, not just California. In fact we went National today, 6 months after the launch of our Facebook application and 3 months after the limited opening of our public website at www.lendingclub.com. In the last 6 months, Lending Club was not available to borrowers in California, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Nevada, and was only partially available in Texas and Ohio. We did the math: that’s about 108 million more Americans who can now borrow and lend directly among each other and get better rates.

So this is really good news…first, because my neighbor in the quaint town of Los Gatos, CA will finally stop asking “Dude, when can I use your site?” and second, arguably more importantly, because in the current climate of tightening lending practices from the banks, people in every community across America are looking for alternatives to help meet their financial needs, and being available nationwide will help us serve our community better.

As we pointed out last weekend, affinities and connections among Lending Club members get most of the credit for the remarkably low defaults recorded by Lending Club borrowers over the last 6 months. The ability for Facebook users and members of Lending Club’s partner alumni and professional associations to connect across all 50 states will make the Lending Club network even more efficient and help us deliver even more value to both lenders and borrowers.

Better Rates Nationwide. Together.

Renaud from Lending Club

People-to-People Lending Service Now Available to Alumni of Georgia Tech, Kansas State and University of Michigan

SUNNYVALE, CA – October 31, 2007 - Since the early 1900s, homecoming has marked the return of millions of alumni looking to reconnect and give back to their alma maters across the country. Lending Club, the rapidly growing people-to-people (P2P) lending service, today announced the availability of its affinity-based lending service through the websites of top university alumni associations to offer a new way to lend and borrow money among fellow alumni. Lending Club is the first in the P2P lending industry to provide co-branded lending applications to online communities, including the alumni associations at Georgia Tech, Kansas State and University of Michigan.

"Whether it's helping fellow alumni pay off student loans or launch new enterprises, we offer a rewarding new way for alumni to invest directly in each other," said Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club. "Lending Club's unique, affinity-based service enables people to bypass the banks to get better rates by borrowing and lending directly within communities they trust."

Lending Club launched at the end of May exclusively as a Facebook application. Since then, the Lending Club community has rapidly grown beyond Facebook to more than 22,000 users who have loaned and borrowed more than $2 million within the community. By partnering with alumni associations across the country, Lending Club further expands its affinity-based lending service across top alumni communities. Lending Club will enable these alumni associations to connect with social networks like Facebook, combining alumni benefits offered by the associations while leveraging the social interaction and viral nature of Facebook and other online communities.

"Our mission is to cultivate loyalty, tradition and lifelong relationships. Lending Club helps leverage these relationships and build new ones by giving our members the opportunity to invest in fellow Wolverines," said Jerry Sigler, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the University of Michigan Alumni Association.

To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch™, that looks at factors such as where a person went to school, where they grew up or what they do for a living. LendingMatch™ instantly recommends diversified portfolios based on these affinities and ensures the creditworthiness of each borrower.

Lending Club is available to individual borrowers with credit scores at or above 640. Using Lending Club, borrowers can apply for personal loans of $500 to $25,000 to be funded by one or many individual lenders. To date lenders have funded 90 percent of all approved loan requests. Lending Club handles user authentication, bank account verification, credit checking, credit reporting, funds transfers and collections.

Three questions: CEO Renaud Laplanche

Hi Renaud – What’s the latest news at Lending Club?

After we opened Lending Club beyond its original Facebook environment last month, we started developing partnerships that will extend Lending Club to a variety of existing communities and networks, beginning with three great universities.

Lending Club is available today to Kansas State and Georgia Tech alumni. It will be available in about a month from now to the 420,000 alumni of the University of Michigan. We chose to make this announcement during the homecoming season, which traditionally has marked the return of millions of alumni looking to reconnect and give back to their alma maters across the country.

What is the significance of this announcement?

I believe this is the first time a financial service has combined the member benefits of alumni associations with the social interaction and viral nature of a social network (sorry, I mean a social utility) like Facebook.

Whether they become Lending Club members through Facebook or via their alumni association websites, our friends the K-State Wildcats, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Michigan Wolverines will be able to lend and borrow money within their respective trusted alumni communities.

What makes alumni relationships relevant for lending and borrowing?

Person-to-person lending grows faster when a level of trust exists between borrowers and lenders. Adding in whole communities of alumni with that trust built in dramatically increases our ability to extend great opportunities to everyone on the platform.

Potential lenders feel closer to their fellow alumni than they do to the general public: they feel both a desire to help and a stronger sense of trust due to their shared connection. If you can make a 12% return (which is the current average of all lenders’ portfolios on Lending Club), and at the same time help fellow alumni, it becomes a no-brainer for lenders.

Borrowers also feel more compelled to make payments on time because they know that their lenders are fellow alumni who are counting on these payments. This keeps defaults minimal and, in turn, reinforces trust on the lenders’ side. You can expect more announcements on this blog shortly as new online communities join the Lending Club ecosystem every week.