Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Lending Club Is Now Offering Business Loans

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You likely know Lending Club is a peer-to-peer lending site that offers personal loans to individuals as well as the chance for personal investors to invest by lending money to individuals.

Now, however, Lending Club is expanding their services and offering business loans.  This is of particular interest if you own a business.

If You’re Looking to Lend Money to a Business

If you’re already investing in Lending Club, you may want to lend money to a business as well.  However, ordinary investors cannot yet do that.  “For now. . .the program is limited to institutional investors such as hedge funds, insurance companies, and family offices that manage wealth for the very rich, but eventually the company plans to let anyone invest” (Bloomberg Businessweek).

How to Qualify for a Lending Club Business Loan

Business funding can often be very difficult to get, so Lending Club’s business loans offer businesses a nice alternative to traditional funding options.  In order to qualify for a loan, a business must meet these minimums:

  • At least $75k in annual sales,
  • a personal guarantor by at least one 20% or greater owner of the company, and
  • the guarantor’s personal credit must be at least “Fair”

What Are The Loan Details?

Businesses that apply for a loan can borrow up to $100,000 for 1 to 5 year terms.

The interest rate is fixed for the life of the loan and can be as low as 5.9% to as high as 29.9%.  The rate your business gets depends on a variety of factors including:

  • how long your business has been established,
  • how financially strong your business is, and
  • the credit worthiness of the business, among other factors.

“Lending Club Chief Executive Officer Renaud Laplanche says the average interest rate will be 12.5 percent” (Bloomberg Businessweek).

Lending Club offers a “check your rate” button on their website.  Simply enter how much you need and what you plan to use it for and then you’ll be taken to a form to fill out that will check your potential rate.  (Filling out this form does not affect your credit score in any way.)

One of the best perks of the Lending Club Business Loan is that you can pay it off early with no pre-payment penalties.

The Fine Details

When borrowing, checking the fine print is always best.  There are a few other fees attached to the loan.

Borrower Origination Fee

The origination fee can range from 1 to 6%.  That money will be taken off the top of the loan.  If you borrow $10,000, for instance, and your origination fee is 3%, you will receive $9,700 because the $300 origination fee is taken off immediately.

The borrower must pay the origination fee to cover the cost of issuing the loans as well as the screening process.

Unsuccessful Payment Fee

If your automatic payment fails, you’ll be charged $15.

Late Payment Fee

A borrower is given a 15 day grace period.  If your payment is later than that, you will be charged either $15 or 5% of the unpaid monthly payment, whichever is greater.

Check Processing Fee

If you opt to pay via check, you’ll be charged a $15 fee.  If you use direct debit, you are not charged a fee.

Funding your business can be difficult, especially if you go through traditional channels.  Lending Club is expanding their business to offer business loans, which is one more way you can potentially find money for your business, whether you’re using it for debt consolidation, marketing, or another purpose.

If you have a business, would you look at Lending Club as a potential lender?  If you invest in Lending Club, would you like to invest in their new business loans?

Lending Club Returns Update 4Q13

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Another quarter has come and gone, so it’s time for an update on the Lending Club returns I’ve been getting on my account.  At the end of the third quarter, my account was sitting at a return rate of 14.69%.  It’s actually improved a bit since then, but Lending Club has also added the ability to adjust the displayed NAR, which does some funny stuff (see below) and reduces the rate a bit.  I think that’s a good thing (again, see below) and that’s the rate I’ll likely be using for future updates.

Lending Club Adjusted NAR

A few months back, Lending Club introduced what they’re calling an adjusted NAR.  Basically, it uses the historical charge off rates of loans at the different stages of delinquency.  Obviously, the current loans have a historical rate of charge off of 0%.  Once they go into the Grace Period, about 23%, 16-30 days late, about 49%, 31-120 days late, about 72%, and in full default, about 86%.Beating Broke Lending Club Update

As an example, my portfolio currently has two notes that are in the 31-120 days late category.  So, when Lending Club is adjusting my NAR, they use the 72% figure and assume that 72% of the principle will be lost.  Using that number, they then calculate the new, adjusted NAR.  With the two notes late, my adjusted NAR is currently showing as 13.16%.  Still a very healthy number, and likely a more realistic number.  I like the new adjustment, as it should give investors a more realistic number to look at.

Lending Club Defaults and Late Notes

As I mentioned above, my portfolio currently has two notes that are 31-120 days delinquent.  And, if you go by the historical numbers, those two notes have about a 72% chance of eventually going into collections.  I’ve been lucky enough to only have had one note actually go that far to date, and the collection agency was able to get a bit of that money back for me.  It wasn’t the entire amount owed, but a significant portion of the principle, which I was happy for.  I could try and sell off the two delinquent notes, but at this point, I wouldn’t get much out of them, so I think I’ll just ride them out and see what happens.  The total principle involved is only about $35, so it would mean about a month and a half of lost interest payments.  That’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The Future of My Portfolio

With the rates I’m getting, I don’t foresee stopping my investing through Lending Club.  I may even start putting some more money into the account sometime in the future.  At the moment, I’m content to just leave it and reinvest the payments each month.  I’ve seen a few other investors that have either significantly changed how they’re using Lending Club, or have begun backing out of it altogether.  I think it’s something that you need to be able to change how you do it, but I also believe that backing out altogether is a mistake at this point.  The technology is still relatively new, and many of the changes that we’re seeing Lending Club make have been for the better.

I’ve created a page that consolidates all of the posts I’ve done on Lending Club, as well as the quarterly updates since I began doing them.  If you’re interested in starting to invest in Lending Club, you can read more on my Lending Club page, or you can sign up for an account and give it a go.

How to Get Started with Lending Club

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Over the past couple of years, I’ve been talking about peer-to-peer lending.  I’ve shared my returns each quarter (see last quarters’), and shared how I go about selecting the loans that I invest in via FolioFN.  One thing I haven’t talked about in detail is how to get started with Lending Club.  So let’s do that.  Let’s talk about how the strategies that you can use to get started with Lending Club.

What is Lending Club

Before we talk about strategy for investing with Lending Club, we need to briefly discuss what Lending Club and other peer-to-peer lenders are.  They act as a service for both borrowers and lenders.  As an individual, you can apply to get a loan, or you can invest in a loan.  If you’re getting a loan, the peer-to- peer lender will vet the loan for risk, and then provide that information, anonymously, to the prospective investors.  As an individual, you can also invest in the loans that have been vetted.  The borrower then repays their loan just like they would if it were borrowed from a traditional lender (banks, credit unions, etc) and each payment (with interest included) is split out to each of the investors.  In short, they make you and the other investor/lenders into the bank.  There’s a lot more too it, but that’s the basic rundown. Now, lets talk about three strategies that you can use to get started with Lending Club.

Go Big or Go Home Strategy

Getting Started with Lending ClubThere are some people who refuse to do anything on a small scale.  You know who you are.  If this describes you, this is likely the strategy that you will use.  Decide on the percentage of your overall portfolio that peer-to-peer lending will be, then calculate how much of an investment that means you’ll be making.  Deposit that amount into your Lending Club account and start investing it into loans.  Depending on the size of your deposit, it might still take a little time to get it 100% invested into loans, but you’ve got the full amount in the account and ready to go.  As you progress, you’ll also want to make regular deposits that match the % of portfolio that you’ve set for your investment accounts.

Slow and Steady Strategy

Some people really like systems.  They like to decide on a path, set the system that will take them down that path and rarely deviate from that system.  In this strategy, you still decide what the percentage of your portfolio that your Lending Club account will occupy.  But, instead of making one large deposit to assign it, you make several smaller, timed deposits to bring it up to the % of portfolio that you’ve decided on.  Each deposit will be invested as you go.  Ongoing deposits will likely be larger than they would be with the above strategy because you’ll be increasing the account balance to match the % of portfolio as well as including your amount of new investments.

Get Your Feet Wet Strategy

Some of you are still a bit leery of peer-to-peer investing.  You’ve heard that it’s risky.  You aren’t sure if it has a future, or, more specifically, if it has a future in your portfolio.  Maybe you like investing in high-value stocks and bonds and playing it safe.  But, still, you’re tempted.  Tempted by the rate of return that I and others are claiming to receive.  This is the strategy for you.  Instead of selecting a percentage of portfolio like the above two strategies, you want to just get your feet wet a little and test the water.  Decide, instead, on an amount of money that you want to use to test the waters.  At a minimum, it should probably be something like $125-$250 minimum.  That amount will allow you to invest in $25 increments and reduce your risk by having at least 5-10 loans in your account.  Using this strategy lets you feel the system out with a minimal amount to lose.  Even if you lose it all, it’s not a large percentage of your investments.

Get Started with Lending Club

As investors and stewards of our money, it’s important to find the best way to handle our money.  For many of us, that means finding ways to eliminate our debt, earn more, and invest smartly.  I’m not a financial adviser.  I’m just some guy that likes learning things about money.  I share those things, and my thoughts on them here.   One of the things that I’ve been using to grow my investment portfolio is Lending Club.  I’ve been very happy with the service, and I recommend it.

Which strategy do I use?  At this point, I still have significant debt.  I happen to believe that investing while you are in debt is not all that smart.  So, I’m more focused on my debt than I am on investing.  I’m still firmly in the get your feet wet strategy with my investments.  In the time I’ve been testing the waters, my portfolio has grown to quite a bit more than the minimum investment I suggest above, but that’s where I started, and that’s the strategy that most closely resembles my usage of Lending Club today.

If you’re thinking about getting started with Lending Club, be smart, know that there are risks, but I don’t think they are as bad as some would claim.  Know that, just like stocks, there is a chance that you will lose your entire investment.  Just like investing in stocks, that chance is pretty small.  I’m not an adviser (that hasn’t changed in the last two paragraphs) so if you’ve still got questions, and want professional advice, I suggest you talk to your adviser first.

I’ve consistently been getting returns on my money of 13-14%.  Even in the boom times of online savings accounts, the interest rates weren’t that high.  Heck, even if you believe Dave Ramsey and his 12% returns on stock investments claim, it isn’t that high.  Getting you feet wet in Lending Club offers a potentially good rate and, I think, is worth a try.

Original Image Credit: Feet by lukasberg, on Flickr