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Peer To Peer Lending Is Legitimate
I first heard about Lending Club and the whole peer to peer lending movement earlier this year when other bloggers were constantly writing about the program. At the time I dismissed the whole concept because I was thinking that it was a high risk gamble where most of the borrowers were big credit risks, and couldn’t get another loan somewhere else. I figured that they would probably not end up re-paying the investors. The high returns had to come some relatively high risk as well, right?
Lending Club loans do come with a degree of risk, like I thought. With peer to peer lending you’re going to have more risk than keeping your money in a CD or high yield savings account, but the returns are a lot higher as well – and you can do things to help manage your risk. And since they’re offering a $25 signup bonus to try it out, there really is no reason not to give it a try!
Performance Of My Lending Club Portfolio
I set up my Lending Club account way back in July and funded it with $100 from my linked bank account. I didn’t invest much because I was extremely skeptical of Lending club, and I didn’t want to commit too much money to this endeavor – at least not right away. I wanted to test the waters.
Read more about how to open a Lending Club account and how to choose your investments – here.
Choosing investments was extremely easy. There are a few ways you can do it. You can have the system choose your loans for you using “Lending Match”. Your loans will be automatically picked and diversified for you. If you prefer you can get more in depth and hand pick your loans. I hand picked my loans because I didn’t want to help fund any loans that didn’t sound responsible to me, and I also wanted to make sure that the borrowers I was lending to were good credit risks.
Once you choose your investments it’s just a matter of sitting back and waiting for your payments to start coming in. So far all 4 of my investments have had their loans issued, and they have all remained current on their payments. So far so good!
My net annualized return on my money is currently at 11.19%. That’s a lot better than what I’m getting in my account at ING Direct!
Benefits Of Peer To Peer Lending
There are a lot of benefits to investing with Lending Club. Among them:
- Bonus cash to sign up. $25 for you to invest, no strings attached! No barrier to entry – so it’s worth a try!
- Great returns. 9.67% average net annualized return. (I’m making more right now!)
- Cut out the middle man – the big bad banks! Help someone get a lower rate than they can at their bank, and make some money in the process.
- It’s fun!
Sign-up Bonus
If you’ve been on the fence about signing up for Lending Club, it’s time to get off the fence – now! Lending club is offering new investors a bonus of $25 to open a new account. No strings attached! What could be better than free money with no strings attached?
So if you’re thinking about signing up for Lending Club, do it now before you forget. You’ll get free money, and there is no no minimum amount to fund an account. Just open the Lending Club account and link your bank account. Once you verify your account the $25 will be triggered to go into your LC account. Easy peasy! Click the button below to sign up!
It seems as though this peer-to-peer lending thing is starting to gain some traction. I was skeptical at first, but the more I hear about it, the more I think it is gaining legitimacy in the lending community.
I’d be willing to check it out.
David/Yourfinances101´s last post ..College Textbooks: Don’t Get Taken For a Ride
David, I was pretty skeptical at first as well, but after actually signing up and seeing how it works, I was a bit more hopeful for the prospects. Since you’re able to hand pick your loans – you’re able to manage your risk a bit, as well as only loan small amounts to each lender minimizing your exposure to any one loan. In addition applicants are put into risk categories, and depending upon how much risk you’re willing to take – you can make more money. If you’re more conservative like me, you can still make good returns, and the default rates are pretty low.
Peter, if you’re getting an 11% return, it sounds like subprime lending rates for the borrowers, which of course sounds risky. What type of loans do they make? Who makes the loan approvals?
If this works, it could be the wave of the future, cutting out the banks.
Kevin@OutOfYourRut´s last post ..Fast Track to Frequent Flyer Miles
In general Lending Club has some guidelines about who they lend to:
In order to qualify for listing a loan request, you will need a FICO score of at least 660 with a debt-to-income ratio (excluding mortgage) below 25%. In addition, your credit history must show that you are a responsible borrower… We may require additional documentation during the review process to support the loan application. We also use strong identity verification and authentication mechanisms to avoid the risk of identity theft.
more about who can borrow here.
When lending you’re able to choose the level of risk that you’re willing to take. So if you don’t want a lot of risk, you can choose to lend to people with great credit scores and repayment histories. The more risk you want to take on, you can do loans for borrowers in lower rated categories and earn more interest. The rates of default may be slightly higher, but the rewards are greater as well. It’s up to you.
While my getting an 11% return might seem like a lot, a lot of these people are trying to get out of debt responsibly – like Matt over at DebtFreeAdventure.com – and are consolidating several higher interest debts into one lower interest payment. So to go from several 15-20% interest rate credit cards to one loan at 11% might actually be a good thing.
Yes! I am one of those who have been on the fence about signing up to invest with LendingClub for quite a while now. Really interested in P2P lending. Now that bonus money is a great incentive to join.
Will sign up later today!
Great! Don’t forget to use my link on this page! ;)