Lending Club Experiences

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Onomatopoeia

Cool! Then I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Want some of this caviar?

Urgh.

No, you'd have to pay me a LOT more than your 83 cents to get me to eat any of that!! .

[Mama Zappa]

Update on my bad loan: it changed from "late 31-120 days" to "default" some time in the last day or so. Not sure whether there's any chance of ever collecting anything on that. There's one more status to go, "Charged off" which I guess is when they completely give up.

This was a medical expense loan (bearing out Chessic Sense's analysis that those are bad luck). I think I have one other medical loan, that is still performing OK but IIRC it's a higher grade.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

I'm finding that it takes a tad over 4 full business days for the payment to actually show up in the cash balance. So if it's due on Monday, my cash increases the Friday. If it's due on Tuesday, it hits the following Monday. If there's a holiday in there, it takes a full calendar week. If you're truly getting credited in 24-36 hours that's much better!

Update on this. Your experience of four business days seems to be the norm. Turns out the 83 cent payment I received on 10/27 was for a loan that was due on 10/22. I have another note with an 83 cent payment scheduled for 10/26, and I confused the two because the payments were the same, and also because I didn't realize that I'd receive a payment that was due on 10/22 on a note I purchased on 10/22 when I signed up.

So, in a nutshell, the payment I received on 10/27 was for a loan scheduled to be paid on 10/22, and the payment I show that was due on 10/26 is still showing a status of processing. Based on your experience, I should probably actually see the 83 cent payment for this loan credited to my account on 11/1. Also, as mentioned the other day, I have a loan with a payment scheduled for 10/28 in the amount of $1.61, showing a status of processing which, if things hold to what I'm expecting, should be credited to my account on 11/3.

At this point I'm wondering why more people don't trade on Lending Club's secondary market FOLIOfn. I'm receiving payments even though I signed up only a week ago, whereas main Lending Club lenders have to first wait for the loan they've invested in to become funded, and then another month before the first payment becomes due. I keep thinking I'm missing something, but haven't, as yet, determined what it could be.

[Onomatopoeia]

Two Week Update

Okay, it's been two weeks since I signed up with Lending Club and began trading on their secondary market Foliofn. Here's where I stand and what I've learned.

I've received payments on 6 of the 8 original loan notes I purchased two weeks ago, totaling $8.83, of which $1.08 is interest. The reason for this is most of the loans I purchased were due to be paid within two weeks after purchase, one of which was due the day I purchased it.

All loan payments that were due have now been paid. The next loan I have with a payment due will be November 8 which, as Mama Zappa advised, and I have since confirmed, will take four business days to process, so I'll probably see that payment in my account on November 12.

I currently have accrued interest in the amount of $3.03, which is amount of interest I will receive, across all loans over the next 30 days if none go into arrears or I don't purchase any additional notes.

As someone advised earlier, when you receive a payment, Lending Club takes 1 percent off the top, so if your payment is 84 cents, you get 83 cents and Lending Club gets 1 cent. What they don't tell you is that 1 percent fee is rounded up. One of my recent payments was for $3.86, however, I received $3.82 because Lending Club took 4 cents. Because you're charged on every payment over the course of a loan, depending on its term, this practice nets Lending Club more than the 1 percent they claim. So in the case of my $3.86 loan, over the course of a 36 month term, Lending Club will actually take $1.44 instead of $1.39 as they round up after each payment, and not based on the term. Is it a big deal? No, not really, but if you have hundreds of loans open with Lending club those few pennies per loan that you're losing over the term will begin to add up.

One thing I learned with trading with Foliofn is you have to be very careful about the discount/markup. Purchasing a loan at a discount will allow you to realize a better return than average. The challenge there is the one of the reasons the loan may be sold at a discount is because the sellers are concerned the borrower may be preparing to default. In many cases, you will have no choice, if you want loans that are only good payers, to purchase at a slight markup. The challenge there is your return may be slightly less than what the original principal and interest value is at the point of sale. Loan notes with a markup generally have a much lower chance to default than those with a discount, but this could mean the difference of realizing 3% interest over the term instead of 9% the face value would suggest. The bottom line is it definitely pays to spend a little more time analyzing and crunching the numbers of any loan purchased on Foliofn.

More again soon.

[Chessic Sense]

Regarding the penny-rounding issue, supposedly on the last payment of the loan, a balloon payment is made and the accounting is a little bit different to account for that. So if your loan survives for the full term, it supposedly all balances out in the end.

I've got an appointment to talk with Jeff Migneault again on Monday. He's supposed to convince me not to take my ball and go home because I have fears that Lending Club may be going under soon. When that happens, I'll come back and tell you guys what he said.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

Regarding the penny-rounding issue, supposedly on the last payment of the loan, a balloon payment is made and the accounting is a little bit different to account for that. So if your loan survives for the full term, it supposedly all balances out in the end.

I've got an appointment to talk with Jeff Migneault again on Monday. He's supposed to convince me not to take my ball and go home because I have fears that Lending Club may be going under soon. When that happens, I'll come back and tell you guys what he said.

Can you provide any info or links to news that led you to believe they may be in trouble or are considering closing down? I haven't seen anything about this.

[lindsaybluth]

Chessic, are you able to simply get all of your money back that's in existing loans? How would you go about doing this?

[Chessic Sense]

I can't dig up a cite right now, but I was poking around the internet and found some blogs that were cautioning that if LC went under, that it would take all our loans with it. And with three million in losses this summer (again, citeless), I was afraid that their cash reserves were getting low.

Jeff has told me that's not the case, however. He said that if Lending Club were to have absolutely no revenue stream...that is, if they didn't collect a dime from anybody...they have enough cash to keep them in business for the next four years.

The business model was to turn profitable this year. But in April or May, a venture capitalist dropped a bunch of cash on them, so they've spent all that cash expanding, and are therefore at a deficit again. They plan to turn profitable by next year, he says.

From March 09 to March 10, they lost $10 million. I got that from their SEC filings available on their site. But it appears they have enough assets to last a while.

In other news, future development projects include cleaning up the trading platform so that the filters are more useful and actually function. Jeff told me that the best way to get changes made is to use the feedback button on the site.



So that's the jist of it. With the interest rates lowered, I don't know if I'm actually going to keep investing or not. But I'm not worried about them walking with our money anymore.

[Chessic Sense]

Originally Posted by lindsaybluth

Chessic, are you able to simply get all of your money back that's in existing loans? How would you go about doing this?

Depends on your definition of "simply". I could just sell the loans on the trading platform. Supposedly, they'll sell quickly. But I would just wait for the loans to run out over the next 3/5 years.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

In other news, future development projects include cleaning up the trading platform so that the filters are more useful and actually function.

I wonder when that'll be. As someone who uses the trading platform exclusively, I concur that their filters are weak, and that's an understatement.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

The business model was to turn profitable this year. But in April or May, a venture capitalist dropped a bunch of cash on them, so they've spent all that cash expanding, and are therefore at a deficit again. They plan to turn profitable by next year, he says.

From March 09 to March 10, they lost $10 million. I got that from their SEC filings available on their site. But it appears they have enough assets to last a while.

Ah, so the $10 million loss is solely due to the new debt on their books because of the investment, and not because of a poor business model or faulty projections. That makes me feel a little better, but I do wonder why they needed such a large infusion all at once.

[lindsaybluth]

Very interesting stuff, Chessic!

[Mama Zappa]

Any updates from anyone? Nothing exciting here; my bad loan is still bad; one other that had made partial prepayments just paid in full; am about to invest in the 30th (roughly) loan, which will put me very close to enough monthly income to fund a new loan each month with no cash infusions.

One that I funded a couple of days ago behaved interestingly. It was 5 days out from its funding date, and funding was coming in VERY slowly (as in, hours of sitting at the same amount pledged). Then suddenly it was fully funded.

Does that sort of thing seem to mean that Lending Club has funded the rest?

The loan was an A4 for about 7 grand, so not too high-risk-seeming.

[Onomatopoeia]

It's been a little over a month since I joined. I now have 16 loan notes; have received $26.95 in payments, $4.51 of which is interest. I can purchase another note now if I want, but I'm holding off until next week when I should have a little over $30 to reinvest.

The payment dates for my loan notes are spread out enough that I'm receiving a credit into my account every three days or so.

So far, it's going pretty well for me, I'd say. I seem to have gotten over the initial glee of a month ago when I was checking my account every five milliseconds, and am down to checking maybe twice a week.

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

One that I funded a couple of days ago behaved interestingly. It was 5 days out from its funding date, and funding was coming in VERY slowly (as in, hours of sitting at the same amount pledged). Then suddenly it was fully funded.

Does that sort of thing seem to mean that Lending Club has funded the rest?

According to the prospectus, it looks like it does:

Originally Posted by LendingClub Prospectus

Q: Does LendingClub fund member loans itself on the platform?

A: From time to time, LendingClub itself funds member loans or portions of member loans. We have no obligation to fund
member loans. To the extent we fund member loans, we will do so without purchasing Notes ourselves.

But here's the really important thing that I was prompted to look up based on the scare rumors that Chessic Sense mentioned. It is false that if Lending Club were to go out of business the loans would just evaporate.

Originally Posted by LendingClub Prospectus

Q: If LendingClub were to become subject to a bankruptcy or similar proceeding, who would service the member
loans?

A: We have executed a backup and successor servicing agreement with Portfolio Financial Servicing Company (“PFSC”).
Pursuant to this agreement, PFSC stands ready to service the member loans. Following five business days’ prior written
notice from us or from the indenture trustee for the Notes, PFSC will begin servicing the member loans. If our agreement
with PFSC were to be terminated, we would seek to replace PFSC with another backup servicer.

[curious11]

Originally Posted by lindsaybluth

Any reason not to have just class A stuff? Or would that barely pull a profit in, I suppose.

The risk with all A1 loans is that they may pay off too early. If a loan pays off early, then you will not make any money in interest.

I currently have 131 loans, 124 current, 6 paid off (3 A5, 1 B1, 1 B3, and 1 E1), and 1 late (B4 headed toward default).

Things to watch out for... Some loans have stated they own their home when in fact they were children of the owners living rent free.

My default claimed to be a chef at a 5 star restaurant.

Tip: Read the application carefully. It takes time, and it's your money.
Also, open a trading account and read some of the loans that are in default to see what those loan applications look like. It seems to me that some of those applications respond with very short answers...

Good Luck and Have Fun!

[Mama Zappa]

curious11 - very good suggestion to read the info on loans being offered on the trading platform!!

How did you find out about the children of owners? did someone confess to that later on when questions were asked?

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by curious11

The risk with all A1 loans is that they may pay off too early. If a loan pays off early, then you will not make any money in interest...

True, though unless they pay off in the first month, you're not *losing* money (as happened to someone upstream... fees were several pennies more than accrued interest!).

I'm not seeing my A-class loans pay off early so far; the two loans that have paid off are C and B. The C class loan, I think I made about 25 cents (it paid off in 2 months) and the B class paid off gradually over about 6 months. I think I made about 50 cents on that one. Not a fortune, to be sure!

[curious11]

I'm not saying that All A1 or Ax loans will pay off early, someone was wondering if there was any downside to only investing in A1 loans. 3 of my Ax loans have paid off early.

As for the rent free children, there was a question that asked if their (the borrowers) name was on the deed, and the explanation came out in response. In another loan, the borrower's statement contained the line, "since I live with my parents rent free...I will have the money to pay back the loan" which contridicted the home ownership check box. When questioned about the contridiction, the borrower reported that they were unable to change the home ownership from own to rent.

Don't forget, you can ask questions of the borrower.

[lindsaybluth]

Wow, I can't believe people have the balls they do. One summer in college I was working for a social networking site; I could live anywhere since our face to face meetings were rare so I lived at home rent-free. I can't imagine pretending those assets were mine. Crazy.

[Onomatopoeia]

Crossed a milestone today.

As of this afternoon, I have received one payment from each of my 16 loan notes, for a total of $30.91, $5.01 of which is interest. This is almost 10 times more than the 53 cents I would have yielded from my savings account on the same amount.

I'm assessing my next move. I was going to wait until early next year to increase my investment, but I may be ready to throw another $1000 in now, perhaps a little more. Still just dipping my toe in, but somewhat less timidly I guess.

[drachillix]

I am finally cralwing back positive after $75 in defaults on two loans previosly mentioned, at the moment, everything is looking good, 32 all in good standing 1 in funding. Only one of mind paid off early so far.

75% of my portfolio is also now in Ax and Bx loans.

[Mama Zappa]

I'm still positive (7% annual return); my one bad loan has been formally charged off.

27 active loans (3 of which are 50 dollar loans) so I'm just about at the point where each month I can fund a new loan just on the income stream. I am not adding a lot of new money right now, just 10-20 bucks here or there.

One silly goal: I want to have a payment coming due every day or two. I now only have one "gap" during the month (4 days between due payments). Silly, I know, but maybe I'll be able to close that in January.

[Chessic Sense]

I'm up to $860 in interest so far. I'm happy with that.

[Mama Zappa]

How are you folks tracking your investments, in whatever software you're using?

This blog (http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/0...ts-in-quicken/) had a good suggestion on another page: just record one purchase (for all new notes), one sale (for all principal received), and one income (for interest received) each month, so that's what I've been doing.

Not sure I agree with what he says he's doing for the default; that MIGHT be something that should be charged off tax-wise.

Current account status: 27 active notes. 2 fully paid, 1 charged off. I've got enough cash to invest in another note today, and probably one more just after Christmas. So far I've made about 54 dollars in interest, minus 21 for the defaulted loan.

[MannyL]

As a borrower my experience has been good. While I could have gone to my CU for a loan and might not have paid any fees I felt that I wanted to help other financially and one way is to pay individuals rather than a faceless institution and had taken a loan from Lending Club so if any of you funded Loan : They showed me the boot so get my loot I'm paying you

As a lender which I was before I became a borrower I'm at a "severe"loss

I invested $25 each into three loans of of them a D grade which paid me a whopping 87 cents and then charged off.

I have a B grade loan that is current and I've received $7.20 from it and lastly

A C grade loan where I received $6.80 it's in the grace period now with a payment that was due 12/10. I'm a little concerned but not much because I know Lending Club doesn't always post accurately.

[drachillix]

I must say when I opened this thread I never expected the response and ongoing saga....

Something that just struck me...I wonder how many of us are invested in the same notes.

[Enderw24]

Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I've netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo.

[drachillix]

Originally Posted by Enderw24

Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I've netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo.

I talked to an aquaintance of mine that is a bank manager, he is not a big fan of peer to peer lending but he had mentioned that in general a bank averages out making about $1 per month for every $100 is has on deposit from being able to cut loans etc. so if you are getting that you arent doing much worse than the bank would off of your money.

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by drachillix

I talked to an aquaintance of mine that is a bank manager, he is not a big fan of peer to peer lending but he had mentioned that in general a bank averages out making about $1 per month for every $100 is has on deposit from being able to cut loans etc. so if you are getting that you arent doing much worse than the bank would off of your money.

100 is 4 loans... assuming a payment of 83 cents per loan of which 26 cents is interest, that's just over a dollar in profit. Of course as that loan ages, the profit per month drops. Say the average is 13 cents interest over the life of the loan, it's 52 cents so less than the banks but still decent.

By comparison: I just checked one of my IRAs and (among other investments) it has a 6,000 dollar cash balance. That earned 54 cents lasts month (yeah, I need to at least move a chunk of that into CDs, even at .25 percent it would be earning more!).

I'm at 29 open loans right now. The only one of note is one of my first 3, which has been on a payment plan for months. As far as I can tell, that just meant slipping the payment date by 2 days each month (from the 14th to the 16th). Of interest: the past 2 months it's had an extra payment of 2 dollars. The loan history page shows a payment of 2.82 - but the extra 2 dollars wasn't credited to me until the 27th (the main payment was credited on the 21st).

A feature that they seem to have taken off the page: a way of seeing what your total estimated monthly payment stream will be. At least I haven't been able to find that in a few months. Now I just estimate by taking the number of loans and multiplying that by 80 cents (I count the handful of 50 dollar loans twice).

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by drachillix

...

Something that just struck me...I wonder how many of us are invested in the same notes.

Here's the list of my notes (loan numbers not note IDs): anyone else got any matches?

493244
468706
469552
477000
495024
495701
461379
496528
600757
619513
619895
508282
472454
463711
472791
499557
523470
455991
455904
556885
574841
511258
541189
592359
491477
501407
481176
629957
635576

[drachillix]

looks like me and you don't match on any of them

453391
453587
454329
457637
459063
460116
461412
466817
470418
470532
472365
472645
473486
473872
474649
476976
480860
485952
488289
488478
492598
502506
511441
512106
516693
527753
541724
542296
564911
589022
596830
601194
606980
617271
619503
622296
633856

[drachillix]

Originally Posted by Enderw24

Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I've netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo.

Yeah but a hell of a lot better than a typical savings account.

The neat part is you roll that over into new loans and start compounding your interest. At 5-8% that does start to add up.

[Onomatopoeia]

Here are mine

365196
368155
380303
385291
386310
390268
411492
411492
458184
459877
460779
469943
472637
477719
485655
490731
500594

Looks like my list doesn't match either of yours.

As you see, I invested in 2 notes from the same loan. I don't know if you can do it in the main Lending Club, but I can purchase as many notes for a single loan as are available on the trading platform.

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Onomatopoeia

...
As you see, I invested in 2 notes from the same loan. I don't know if you can do it in the main Lending Club, but I can purchase as many notes for a single loan as are available on the trading platform.

You can, but you'll be disproportionately hit by fees. Say you invest 3 times in a loan that pays 80 cents per month per 25 dollar investment. You'll get 3 separate payments of 80 cents, and it'll take a penny from each. If you invested a single time for 75 dollars, your payment would be 2.40, or 2 cents in fees (it appears to round up OR down to the nearest whole penny). So you're better off investing it all at once vs. in dribs and drabs.

As we've all noticed, Lending Club appears to be at least partially funding loans themselves, a lot of the time. That leads to two observations:
1) it's a big incentive for them to be aggressive in collections actions since their money is on the line too, but
2) it suggests to me that they're having trouble getting enough investors to fund the demand. What happens when they've invested all their venture capital? Won't the demand dry up because loans aren't getting fully funded?

On a side note, I just had a third loan pay off early. Total interest on the loan was something lke 75 cents, minus about 30 cents in fees. I still made a profit and of course immediately re-invested the payback. I've also just sent a couple hundred dollars from a windfall, will gradually invest that over the next month.

[Onomatopoeia]

It occurs to me that some (most?) people, me included, don't reinvest their earnings immediately, thereby experiencing a period of no interest being earned on the uninvested, inactive funds, which negatively impacts the amount of interest on the aggregate investment. As you only earn interest on funds that are actively invested in loans, and because you can only reinvest earnings that have reached the minimum $25 threshold, that 9.67% interest (or whatever your number is) you earn on your notes, is actually less than that.

A second thought. You're also not earning interest on funds invested during the period the loan is in a funding status, correct?

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Onomatopoeia

It occurs to me that some (most?) people, me included, don't reinvest their earnings immediately, thereby experiencing a period of no interest being earned on the uninvested, inactive funds, which negatively impacts the amount of interest on the aggregate investment. As you only earn interest on funds that are actively invested in loans, and because you can only reinvest earnings that have reached the minimum $25 threshold, that 9.67% interest (or whatever your number is) you earn on your notes, is actually less than that.

A second thought. You're also not earning interest on funds invested during the period the loan is in a funding status, correct?

Right.

LC has a lot of investor money in "float" status at any given time. There's the time from when you deposit money to when it's disbursed to the borrower. There's the time between when they receive payments and they credit it to your account (4 business days). There's the time between when it's credited, and you withdraw or re-invest it. There's the time between when they wire money from your bank account and they credit it to your LC account (e.g. my latest transfer left my checking account yesterday and is not yet available at LC).

My assumption is that these funds are held by LC in some sort of interest-bearing account at some sort of bank, so they're getting some interest on them. Not a lot, given current short-term interest rates, but if you're holding something like 100,000 on average and getting .25% interest, that's still an extra few bucks a month.

That income, plus the loan fees they skim off the top of the loan principal, plus the payment fees skimmed off what we investors receive, means they've got a guaranteed income.

[Mama Zappa]

Update here. Due to a recent windfall (inheritance), I transferred 200 dollars and have invested most of that (still have 50 dollars of it left to invest). That plus some money I transferred in December, leaves me with a comparatively large number of issued loans awaiting their first payment - 8 loans. I've been picking one or two new ones per week. Mostly Bs, with almost as many As and Cs but Bs definitely dominate. 35 loans outstanding (of which 4 are 50 dollar investments).

Had another loan pay off early, recently - that makes 3. Weirdly, the first one which paid off (after having been late the first month, they paid in full the next) has another collections action against it ("contacted 3rd party or borrower's acquaintance") as of November - 8 months after it was paid off. Weird.

Met one goal this month - a silly one, but still: I now have due dates spanning the entire month with no more than 1 day gap between them. So every day or two, there'll be cash hitting my account. And there are enough loans now paying that I should be able to fund a new one just from the proceeds, slightly more often than once a month.

No new troubled loans so far, not even the one D class loan. Of course that's only been 9 months, but the credit score is unchanged so hopefully the borrower is stable.

[Mama Zappa]

Looks like they're now offering loans of up to 35,000 (the old limit was 25K, I think). I opened my filter criteria up to include loans for that amount... and got a bunch of F-class 60 month loans.

Somehow these do not tempt me.

[Mama Zappa]

Any status updates from anyone?

I periodically glance at the individual loans to see how their credit scores are faring... and just noticed the other day that one (an early C2 from January 2010) had the usual ups and downs... then plummeted 3 notches this month. It's due in 10 days, we'll see how that goes.

Another early B5 from about that same time ALSO plummeted 3 notches. It just made an on-time payment, however.

No other defaults so far.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

Any status updates from anyone?

I periodically glance at the individual loans to see how their credit scores are faring... and just noticed the other day that one (an early C2 from January 2010) had the usual ups and downs... then plummeted 3 notches this month. It's due in 10 days, we'll see how that goes.

Another early B5 from about that same time ALSO plummeted 3 notches. It just made an on-time payment, however.

No other defaults so far.

I currently have 19 notes. They're all chugging along. The excitement seems to have worn off for me. I check my account once every two weeks or so and purchase a new note whenever I have enough in the account to do so. I haven't transferred any money into my account since November.

Since I opened my LC account 5 months ago, I've received $114.33 in payments, of which $19.24 is interest. This is on my $500 investment which, according to my calculations means that my effective interest rate is 9.4%, which is much, much better than I can get from any bank. Maybe I should just take the plunge and throw $10,000 in there.

Does anyone know someone with a large LC account?

[drachillix]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

Any status updates from anyone?

My initial 2 defaults ($70 worth) still effect my overall results but the number keeps climbing

Currently 42 notes

$101.58 in intrest recieved little over $1K total balance. I check every few days.

[Chefguy]

I finally got around to giving all this a closer look and wouldn't you know it: Oregon is on their shit list (or vice versa). How do I get around this, when they ask for your address?

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Chefguy

I finally got around to giving all this a closer look and wouldn't you know it: Oregon is on their shit list (or vice versa). How do I get around this, when they ask for your address?

I hear there are ways around it, but it sounds kind of sketchy to me, so I won't repeat it here.

What I did was sign up under their trading platform called Foliofn, because my state, NJ, also doesn't allow its residents to use the Lending Club main site to lend. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing so. For me, the pluses outweighed the minuses, the main plus being that I make so much more in interest than I could from any bank, so I jumped in.

[Chefguy]

Originally Posted by Onomatopoeia

I hear there are ways around it, but it sounds kind of sketchy to me, so I won't repeat it here.

What I did was sign up under their trading platform called Foliofn, because my state, NJ, also doesn't allow its residents to use the Lending Club main site to lend. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing so. For me, the pluses outweighed the minuses, the main plus being that I make so much more in interest than I could from any bank, so I jumped in.

And where does one find Foliofn? If you need to PM information, feel free.

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Chefguy

And where does one find Foliofn? If you need to PM information, feel free.

There should be links on the main page at lendingclub.com, or from one of their FAQ pages.

[Chefguy]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

There should be links on the main page at lendingclub.com, or from one of their FAQ pages.

Perhaps there should be, but I can't find a link, which is why I asked.

[Mama Zappa]

Originally Posted by Chefguy

Perhaps there should be, but I can't find a link, which is why I asked.

Sorry - I answered without checking the links.

Here's one I got by googling "lendingclub.com foliofn":
https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/aboutTrading.action

They don't make it obvious, for sure! I got to this link by noodling around the Help section:
https://www.lendingclub.com/foliofn/faq.action

I gather you sign up as an investor and then have to do a separate folio application (which is trivial). Onamatopoeia can tell you more; I have a folio account but have never bought / sold there.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Chefguy

And where does one find Foliofn? If you need to PM information, feel free.

Hi Chef,

You won't see it on the home page, or login page. What you have to do first is to create an LC account. If your state doesn't allow you to use the main LC platform to fund notes, you will be given an option at that time to sign up with Foliofn, but again, you must create a Lending Club account first.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Mama Zappa

I gather you sign up as an investor and then have to do a separate folio application (which is trivial). Onamatopoeia can tell you more; I have a folio account but have never bought / sold there.

Yes, this is correct. Sign up with Lending Club first. You will then be given the option to sign up with Foliofn.