People-to-People Lending Service Now Available to Alumni of Georgia Tech,
Kansas State and University of Michigan
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Since the early 1900s,
homecoming has marked the return of millions of alumni looking to reconnect
and give back to their alma maters across the country. Lending Club, the
rapidly growing people-to-people (P2P) lending service, today announced the
availability of its affinity-based lending service through the websites of
top university alumni associations to offer a new way to lend and borrow
money among fellow alumni. Lending Club is the first in the P2P lending
industry to provide co-branded lending applications to online communities,
including the alumni associations at Georgia Tech, Kansas State and
University of Michigan.
"Whether it's helping fellow alumni pay off student loans or launch new
enterprises, we offer a rewarding new way for alumni to invest directly in
each other," said Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club.
"Lending Club's unique, affinity-based service enables people to bypass the
banks to get better rates by borrowing and lending directly within
communities they trust."
Lending Club launched at the end of May exclusively as a Facebook
application. Since then, the Lending Club community has rapidly grown
beyond Facebook to more than 22,000 users who have loaned and borrowed more
than $2 million within the community. By partnering with alumni
associations across the country, Lending Club further expands its
affinity-based lending service across top alumni communities. Lending Club
will enable these alumni associations to connect with social networks like
Facebook, combining alumni benefits offered by the associations while
leveraging the social interaction and viral nature of Facebook and other
online communities.
"Our mission is to cultivate loyalty, tradition and lifelong
relationships. Lending Club helps leverage these relationships and build
new ones by giving our members the opportunity to invest in fellow
Wolverines," said Jerry Sigler, senior vice president and chief financial
officer of the University of Michigan Alumni Association.
To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending
Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch(TM),
that looks at factors such as where a person went to school, where they
grew up or what they do for a living. LendingMatch(TM) instantly recommends
diversified portfolios based on these affinities and ensures the
creditworthiness of each borrower.
Lending Club is available to individual borrowers with credit scores at
or above 640. Using Lending Club, borrowers can apply for personal loans of
$500 to $25,000 to be funded by one or many individual lenders. To date
lenders have funded 90 percent of all approved loan requests. Lending Club
handles user authentication, bank account verification, credit checking,
credit reporting, funds transfers and collections.
About Lending Club
Lending Club(TM) is a lending community where people borrow and lend
money among each other, bypass banks and get better rates. Members can
borrow money more easily and at a better rate than they would get from a
bank, or invest in a portfolio of loans at higher rates than those served
by savings accounts or CDs. LendingMatch(TM) technology helps match lenders
and borrowers by using connections established through social networks,
associations and online communities, and build diversified portfolios based
on lender preferences. Lending Club is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. More
information is available at: http://www.lendingclub.com
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