Hi @Efi! I loved your post on P2P lending the other day:
Lots of investable stuff in there. You referenced LC, TREE, YRD, ONDK, and SoFi via SFTBY. LC is certainly P2P but I can’t find much on how P2P is facilitated by the others. They don’t seem to pitch it in an obvious way on their sites like LC does.
This is a brilliant article Efi! Congrats! I will use the knowledge from this article!
Some are mixed-model. For instance OnDeck’s funds for lending is a mix of their own balance sheet and other investors’ money.
SoFi is virtually a full service financial firm at this point, but their roots are in P2P. I haven’t looked into their offerings recently, but as of about 18 months ago, they offered a fund to investors which was backed by the performance of their student loan portfolio. So you as an investor couldn’t pick and choose which loans to invest in like at Lending Club or Prosper, but you could still gain indirect exposure to the portfolio via the fund.
@dailyfintechrocks Prosper marketplace is not pure P2P either. They have setup a fund structure and just now they tapped into institutional money.
https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2017/02/96722-big-news-prosper-marketplace-lender-signs-agreement-5-billion-loan-purchases-consortium-investors/
Check out the topic What is the "optimal" business model for lending platforms? #LenditEurope insights following the Lendit Europe conference in London.
I think that only Ratesetter is left pure P2P, from the old timers.
Interesting that some (most?) of these companies started out innovating and have since steered toward conventional products. Must be a sign of a mature marketplace.