Smava

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Smava

Smava - If you speak German, Smava description on site translated to English: "smava the first market place for credits from humans is to humans" Quote on site translated: "eBay for money". Smava! In German, "Kredit, Ratenkredit, Privatkredit, Sofortkredit". Microlending, micro credit, micro loans: Smava - German Social Lending Site

Smava Peer To Peer Lending

Here is some background on a P2P lending startup in Germany. The features are familiar, with one odd feature that the minimum bid is 500 Euros. This is unusually high compared to the others in this space, and that will be interesting to see how that works out.

Possibly tied to that point, its not apparent there is any lender fee. That would mean the revenue model would be based on borrower fees only.

Startup Smava.de starts offering p2p lending in Germany. Anybody can lend or request a loan online. Borrowers, after registering will by checked for identity and credit grade by Smava. Smava uses PostIdent (a service offered by German postal service Deutsche Post) to verify the identity of the borrower and relies on credit report information from Schufa, a leading German credit bureau. Smava is only open to borrowers with credit grades A to F (which Smava says leads to expected default rates between 1.4% und 7.2%).

Smava Blog Posts from Google

Kredit Ratenkredit Privatkredit Sofortkredit - smava.de: smava bietet schnell Kredite von Mensch zu Mensch - eine sichere Alternative zur Bank. Stiftung Warentest bestätigt: ein Angebot mit Hand und Fuß. Jetzt günstigen Kredit bekommen.
Kreditprojekt Betriebsmittelkredit - smava.de: Betriebsmittelkredit, Der Betriebsmittelkredit in Höhe von ? 30.000 ( jetziger Kontostand = ? 19.500 ) soll ausgeglichen und zukünftig auf Guthabenbasis geführt werden, da die Zinsbelastung für diesen Kredit zu hoch ist., ...
Kreditprojekt sanieren - smava.de: sanieren, sehr geehrte Damen und Herren mit diesem kredit möchte ich meine schulden abbezahlen so das ich nur eine gesamtrate habe , Umschuldung.
Kreditprojekt Erweiterung EDV und Büro - smava.de: Erweiterung EDV und Büro, Zur Bewältigung der Umsatzsteigerungen muss für die neuen Mitarbeiter in neue Büroausstattung investiert werden. Darüber hinaus soll die vorhandene Computerausstattung (Arbeitsplätze und Server) komplett ...

Peer To Peer Lending Blog Posts from Google

Jantaloan peer to peer lending site for educating young ...: Jantaloan peer to peer lending site for educating young people.With your help, it will enable poor families to invest in their own education through microloans and scholarships for primary, secondary, and vocational education.
Peer to peer lending – Page 1 of 1Google Alerts – peer to peer ...: What are some of you guys opinions on peer to peer lending sites, like www. lendingclub.com for example. Has anyone had any experiences good or bad? ...
Free Gifts From Lending Club's DebtBuster ChallengeGoogle Alerts ...: I also suggested investigating options from peer-to-peer lenders. My own experiment with peer-to-peer lending as a lender failed because the intended ... See all stories on this topic.
Using Peer-to-Peer Lending Sites to Make Lending to Family Members ...: When you loan money to friends and family members, you're likely never going to see the money again. There's no consequence to the borrowers' credit score.

Peer To Peer Lending News from Google

Using Peer-to-Peer Lending Sites to Make Lending to Family Members More Successful: It's entirely possible to do this using peer-to-peer lending sites such as Prosper or Lending Club. You could have your friend create a loan listing on the ...
Free Gifts From Lending Club's DebtBuster Challenge: I also suggested investigating options from peer-to-peer lenders. My own experiment with peer-to-peer lending as a lender failed because the intended ...
6 Things to Remember Before Lending to Family: Consider using a company to collect the payments or a peer-to-peer lending site Having a third party collect and distribute the payments can take the ...
P2P Lending Gets a Boost from the House: By Liz Gannes December 11, 2009 No Comments Peer-to-peer lending services like Prosper got a new lease on life from the House of Representatives today, ...

Smava Link

Smava.de - smava ist der erste Online-Marktplatz f?dite von Mensch zu Mensch.: smava vermittelt g?e Kredite online. Hier kommen vertrauensw? Privatpersonen zusammen, die Geld anlegen oder Kredit aufnehmen wollen.

Social Lending Sites

The worldwide lending industry is a multi-billion dollar industry where people borrow from banks, financial institutions and other private lenders. In the last couple of years, the lending industry has gone through an evolution and has given way to social lending as the new and promising mode of lending. Also known as peer- to- peer lending or person to person (P2P) lending, one of the first companies to set the base for social lending are Zopa, Prosper and more recently LendingClub.

Zopa is considered the first social lending marketplace in the world and its roots are in the United Kingdom. With the launch and immediate success of Zopa, other similar peer to peer lenders have sprung up like Prosper in the US, Boober in Netherlands and Smava in Germany.

If you are wondering whether the P2P loans offered at the social lending sites are worth it or not then the answer is most likely yes. There is not much of a difference as far as the P2P loans from these lending hubs and from a bank is concerned. The difference lies in the fact that there are no banks, no long procedures, and no middleman and above all the entire process is transparent for both the lenders and borrowers (no more hidden hard to find loan agreements!).

The main objective of the social lending hubs is to offer an online loan with the best interest rates and to make customers feel like they are borrowing from a friend or community. This peer to peer borrowing is increasingly being seen in a new light and is being considered as a part of community borrowing (which was more traditionally offered by small local community banks).

Other benefits:

Creation of a new asset class: Lenders on any of the peer to peer lending hubs can now take advantage of a new asset class, which they can add to their portfolio because it doesn't fall under an investment or even a savings account.

Choosing interest rates and loan repayment: There are several benefits for lenders as well as borrowers. In social lending hubs like Zopa or Prosper, lenders have the freedom and the flexibility to choose a loan repayment time period as well as the interest rate on the p2p loan.

Active community participation: one of the salient points is that this kind of a lending hub make borrowers feel as if they are following from an actual person and not an organization or a faceless institution. Hence it helps in developing a strong community feeling.

Lenders at any of the social lending websites have the power to set a minimum interest rate that they want to earn and can bid in an increment of $50 till $25,000 through loan listings. Borrowers can create a loan listing for a period of 3-years, and borrow an amortized and unsecured loan of up to $25,000 and also provide the maximum interest rate that they will be able to pay a lender.

The success of Zopa lies in its facts and figures. They are the largest lender today and have loaned out in excess of $930,000. The return on investment for lenders has been around 5.01%, which is healthy especially in the wake of the fact that social lending is still in its nascent stages. One of the top lenders even got an ROI of 19.8% on social lending websites.

The Lenders

By now you are probably thinking who these lenders really are? Are they banks in disguise or are they really other people? The truth is that they are really people. Let's take Zopa and Prosper for example. Both the social lending hubs are backed by Benchmark Capital who also funded eBay. Zopa or Prosper are the best alternatives that anyone can have to banks or other financial lending institutions, however they are restricted to the UK and US markets.

The current business model of Zopa is based on a 1% exchange fee that borrowers are paying them upfront. In return, Zopa is offering borrowers a better interest rate by cutting out the bank middleman. More than that, a borrower will have more control of the entire lending process and has the flexibility to establish an interest rate.

Zopa is the acronym for Zone of Possible Agreement, and its lenders include only U.K. residents who are over 18 years of age. To qualify as a lender, a person needs to have a valid bank account and a high personal Equifax credit rating. There are two restrictions for becoming a lender and they are:

%u2022Lenders have to be individuals and not businesses.
%u2022Lenders will not be allowed to have anything in excess of £25,000 ($47,000) in outstanding loans at a given point in time.

The American counterpart of Zopa is Prosper and they also handle maximum loan of $25,000 at a time. At this point the future of social lending looks bright as it has now hit New Zealand and Australia with the first peer to peer lending hub in Australia to launch shortly being Lending Hub (you can see their site at lendinghub.com.au and their active blog at blog.lendinghub.com.au) which will offer P2P loans with a strong community focus to ensure a truly social experience for both borrowers and lenders rather than just being a transactional online loan tool.

Ivan Mantelli is an accomplished writer as well as the owner of an Australian Lending Hub http://lendinghub.com.au

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