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Lending Club Returns Above Now Above 12%. Lending Club Receives $15 Million In Funding

By Peter Anderson 6 Comments - The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money. Last edited November 19, 2023.

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My Lending Club account has continued to improve over the last few months as my returns have now surpassed the 12% threshold I was aiming for, reaching 12.06% net annualized return this month.

I’ve been able to improve my returns over the past year or two by moving away from investing solely in A and B grade loans, and moving into more lower grade loans with higher interest.  Of course I’m still picking and choosing the loans that I’m investing in, and using some criteria I’ve set to choose the loans, but overall I’ve been happy with how my portfolio is performing.

$15 Million In Funding From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Lending Club received 15 million in equity funding this month from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a well known name in venture capital.  From Market Watch:

Lending Club ( http://www.lendingclub.com ), the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, announced today a $15 million equity investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and the appointment of Mary Meeker, general partner at KPCB, to the company’s board of directors.

Kleiner Perkins is noted for investing in companies that are game changers, well known brands like Amazon, Google and Twitter.   The fact that they’re giving Lending Club the thumbs up is good news for social lending as a whole.  Peter Renton over at SocialLending.net comments on the news:

Obviously this is good news for Lending Club and for p2p lending in general. The team at Kleiner Perkins have identified and invested in many companies that have brought quantum shifts in the business landscape…

With this much cash on the balance sheet Lending Club can take their time before reaching profitability. Amazon took over seven years to post a profitable quarter and Lending Club is not even five years old yet. Although I don’t think Lending Club will wait two more years before reaching profitability it might not happen as soon as I originally thought – which was by the end of this year.

Kleiner Perkins obviously thinks that Lending Club is an innovative company and wants to be a part of the process as they change the lending and banking industries.

Returns Rise Above 12%

My returns with Lending Club have continued rising month over month.  This month I finally reached a goal I had been trying to attain for a while, seeing my net annualized return top 12% for the first time. When I first started with Lending Club my returns were below 10%.  Since then I’ve changed my investing strategy a bit allowing myself to invest in lower graded loans, while still applying filters and criteria to the loans I invest in.

So far the strategy has worked well with only one defaulted loan (which was almost paid off anyway) and with two more loans currently late, but on a payment plan. So let’s look at the numbers.

Lending Club Returns

  1. Net Annualized Return of 12.06%: Up from 11.95% last month and 11.75% in early April, 11.44% in February, all the way back to 10.53% in July of last year.  Decent progress over the last year..
  2. Number of defaults.. one, with 2 still late: A while ago now I had my first charged off loan, a Grade B loan. It’s interesting that the loans I’ve had either go late or get charged off have mostly been the higher grade loans. Last month I reported two new late loans, one of them a grade A loan, and the other a Grade D loan. The grade A loan is thankfully almost all paid off already, so even if it gets charged off my losses would be minimal. The grade D loan that’s late  has paid off about half of the loan balance so far, and is on a payment schedule starting at the end of the month. Hopefully they’ll get back on track.
  3. Thirty loans have been paid off early: Eleven were A grade loans, nine were grade B loans, six were C grade, three grade E and one F. Looks like grade A and B loans are more likely to get paid back early, reducing returns. One reason why I’ve started investing in more higher grade loans.
  4. My account balance increasing, re-investing returns: I currently have $2,806.96 in my account, with $91.61 of that ready to invest.
  5. I’m still diversified by investing across a large number of loans: I’ve had 178 loans, with no more than $25 in each loan. In other words, I’m diversified across a large number of loans, lessening my risk from any one loan going into default or getting charged off.

NOTE: Did you know that 100% of investors who have invested in 800 notes or more had positive returns. Not too shabby, not everyone in the stock market can say that!

Figuring Out Your Actual ROI

Lending Club Loans MapA site that I discovered a while ago that gives what I think is a better picture of the actual ROI you can expect is Nickel Steamroller’s Lending Club portfolio analyzer. To use the tool you just download all of the information about your Lending Club notes, upload them into the tool and it will give you an estimated ROI after analyzing your data.  It will tell you whether you should think about selling some loans on the secondary platform, and show you duplicate notes or loans receiving below average interest.   The site will also show you a nice little map giving pinpoints where all of your loans are located.

The analyzer sshows that my actual return is probably going to be somewhere around 10.78%. It also gives me several  sell recommendations, particularly on some of my older lower interest loans that I did when first starting out. Those particular loans tend to be grade A or B, and have interest below 8%.

Lending club ROI

Evolving Lending Club Strategy

Here’s the basic strategy I’ve been using with Lending Club since I started investing. The strategy has changed a little bit over time to include more low grade loans and a few loans with higher balances.

  • Less than $10,000$15,000: I believe I’ll still be sticking with mostly loans below $10,000. Lower amounts mean higher likelihood of payback of the loan.
  • Zero delinquencies: Again, I may fudge slightly on this one, but I still want it to be very few or zero delinquencies.
  • Debt to income ratio below 20-25%: I like to invest in loans where the borrowers have a lower DTI ratio, and preferably have higher incomes. I’ll try to keep this as is.
  • Good employment history: I like loans with a decent employment history of at least 2 years, and a decent income.

So that’s what I’m doing with my Lending Club portfolio right now, and how I’m investing.

Not ready to invest, but looking to consolidate debt or pay off a high interest credit card? You might want to consider borrowing from Lending Club. Check out my post on borrowing from Lending Club.

sign up for lending club

Are you currently investing in Lending Club? How are your returns looking? Tell us in the comments!

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  • Lending Club Returns Increase To 12.22%. Lending Club Exceeds $1 Billion In Loans!

    My Lending Club returns increased to an all time high at 12.22%, while Lending Club has now issued over $1 billion in loans.

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Last Edited: 19th November 2023 The content of biblemoneymatters.com is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Visitors to biblemoneymatters.com should not act upon the content or information without first seeking appropriate professional advice. In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.

This article is about: Investing, Making Money

About Peter Anderson

Peter Anderson is a Christian, husband to his beautiful wife Maria, and father to his 2 children. He loves reading and writing about personal finance, and also enjoys a good board game every now and again. You can find out more about him on the about page. Don't forget to say hi on Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook!

Comments

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  1. Tim says

    Wow that is GREAT, Peter!!! I just got my Roth IRA funded for $5k last week. I am reading your blog and also that of Peter Renton who seems to be quiet a bit more agressive (from his blog post on 2/9/12). Although I am used to stock market volatility, this is stretching me a bit. I am hoping for great returns, but since it is initially only $5k, it’s not worth getting too stressed about. As a small part of a much larger retirement plan, I feel like its a chance I can take with the hope of larger gains.

    Thanks for your encouragement in this and previous P2P related blog posts.

    Regards,
    Tim

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      Thanks Tim, I feel like it’s been doing pretty well and I just might start adding more funds to it as soon as I’m able. Peter Renton is one of THE go to sources for great information about P2P lending, and he definitely has forgotten more about the topic that I’ll ever know. His course on the topic is awesome as well.

      Glad you’ve jumped in and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Remember that stat above, that 100% of investors who have invested in 800 notes or more had positive returns. I’m pretty sure the numbers are pretty good even for those with less loans in their account like me and you. Best of luck!

      Reply
  2. Brad Haven says

    Peter,
    Great job on your Lending Club returns! How much does your rate of return drop when you have a loan go bad? Does it get figured in after a loan goes bad?

    Do you think the A B C rating really means much?

    Right now, I am sticking with A and B loans with my rate at 7.66 right now. All my loans are for under $10,000.00 loans and I invest $25.00 per loan like you.

    Thanks for your info! Brad

    Reply
  3. Ray says

    I’m mainly invested with Prosper and returning over 16%… Currently I have almost $16k invested at Prosper and just started a separate account for an IRA so I don’t have any data from that account. I lend $25-$35 on average with a few notes that are higher but not very often.

    I do use LendingClub, but I only have $1200 invested there, but my return is over 18%.

    On Prosper I never lend to anyone with a rate below 18% and I’m normally focused on the E to HR with rates 25-30%+. While those loans might default at a higher rate, the higher interest rate offsets those defaults. I also find that many of the rates are too high and are priced incorrectly, but that’s good news for me.

    I’m not a big fan on the platform that LendingClub uses, as I enjoy Prosper’s more, and they don’t have the higher interest rates that Prosper does, but I do like to diversify across multiple platforms. I will continue to invest with LendingClub and might up my monthly deposits so I can achieve more diversification due to the different underwriting requirements from Prosper and from LendingClub.

    I stopped investing in rates under 18% at Prosper years ago but occasionally I’ll lend on a loan around 15% at LendingClub due to their lower rate structure.

    I use lendstats.com to setup my filters and once those are setup, I find it much easier to setup automated investments for some of my cash.

    Reply
  4. John says

    If you don’t mind can you share the criteria used for choosing the loans?

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      I have some of the criteria I’ve used above, but this post at another site gives some other filters you could use.

      Reply
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