P2PGI aims to raise £209 million through the deal and is working with Deutsche Bank to facilitate the Zopa loan book securitization; the portfolio will contain 31,153 loans with an average weighted interest rate of 7.2%; according to AltFi, P2PGI will hold a material net economic interest for the duration of the transaction and will also purchase at least 5% of each class of notes. Source.
While speaking as a keynote at LendIt Europe 2017 Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana said old school banking was a zero-sum game; he explained how Zopa is looking to build what he thinks will be a fairer bank based on customer needs; they are currently about halfway through the licensing process. Source.
Funding Circle lead originations for the month of September followed by Zopa and RateSetter; many other originators across Europe are included in the list. Source
Zopa's Chief Product Office Andrew Lawson told investors last week they launched a new credit risk scorecard; the scorecard is meant to better help the platform assess borrowers and what is behind their approval/denial; Zopa has seen higher than expected losses and has also cut down on lending to higher risk customers; Lawson explained how the new model will use traditional credit methodology mixed with data science. Source.
The article discusses recent news of decreasing valuations of GLI Finance backed companies, potentially higher losses on Zopa's platform and troubles at Wellesley & Co. Source
In an interview with Business Insider at LendIt Europe Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana says even though new investors are on hold they are growing lending volumes by as much as 50 percent; the investor waiting list is over 15,000 and the current plan is to have them start investing by year end; the interview also touched on consumer credit and the overall economy in the UK. Source.
AltFi takes an in-depth look at the oldest P2P lender Zopa and how they are positioning themselves for the future; recent partnerships with the Saffron Building Society and the coming PSD2 regulatory changes are key ingredients to the company’s future; Zopa also has plans to introduce a number of new products when it launches their bank in 2018. Source
Zopa launched a pilot with provide Uber drivers with low credit scores car loans; however the partnership didn’t attract the amount of customers it had hoped; Zopa stated in the FT article, “The pilot was interesting, but demonstrated that the potential opportunity was limited for us, and we had other priorities.”; Bryan Zhang, co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance discusses one of the problems in the industry today, attracting borrowers . Source
Zopa plans to reopen to new investors by end of the year after stopping investor on boarding earlier this year; they stopped taking new money because they were finding it harder to get good quality borrowers; they also saw a big jump in demand for their Innovative Finance Isa; while the plan for opening to new investors is targeted at year end it could be delayed by existing investor's Isa demand. Source.
Zopa has promised its investors it will speed up the time for selling loans on the platform after investors complained of loan sale times taking weeks; the platform has identified this as an issue, reporting in a blog post, "Recently, some of our processes have been running slower than normal, resulting in it taking longer for you to sell loans and access your money early."; Senior Developer Joe Hutchinson says the platform has been working to upgrade its technology with steady progress and it has more enhancements planned which will provide more capacity on the server improving performance significantly over the next few weeks. Source