Martha wanted to buy a new car when her old Rover gave way and required about £2,500 to £2,800 to buy the one she liked. Her bank offered her a loan at a shocking 29% for £2,500 for a loan term of 4 years. This was way beyond her means. As she enquired among her friends for a more feasible loan rate, she came across social lending and decided to give it a try. Within the next three weeks she had got the much wanted loan at 15% which she could easily payback in the next five years. How does P2P lending manage loans at reasonable rates and that too for borrowers with not so perfect credit rating? It does so by cutting out middlemen with their huge overheads and big margins.
Most social lending marketplaces function on the Ebay model where borrowers and lenders work out a loan without recourse to a third party. The borrowers’ loan requests are listed on the online platform, indicating the required amount, interest rate and the duration of the loans. Lenders place bids on the loan listings which suit their investment criteria after sifting through hundreds of borrowing requests. The borrowers’ online profiles can provide their financial strengths as well as responsibilities including their monthly income and expenses. Most sites get the borrowers’ creditworthiness assessed through their credit scores as well as various other parameters like calculating their DTI ratio, their stability and affordability scores etc. Most social lending websites offer lending amounts up to £25000 for duration of 1 to 5 years.
The registration procedure for most social lending sites is quick and easy to comply with. You can apply as long as you meet the minimum application criteria. Borrowers can request for a loan for a plethora of reasons including debt consolidation, marriage, traveling, surgery, business, house repairs and student loan. Providing an authentic explanation of why you want the loan and how you intend to pay it back as well as a few indicators on your stability and reliability as a borrower can go a long way in getting your loan funded. However, you can choose to be discreet about your personal and financial information by using your privacy settings on your profile.
P2P lending endeavours to build an online community for timely and affordable financial help to people turned down by traditional lending institutions for a number of reasons. It attempts to assess the creditworthiness of the borrowers through more than just their credit scores. Being online, their service charges are low and access is much easier. It can also be instrumental in helping borrowers build a healthy credit history for the future by making timely repayments on their loans.
In the process, peer lending can generate tangible benefits for real people on their hard earned money rather than for impersonal institutions like banks. Moreover, it also diversifies the risk quotient involved in unsecured