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Lending Club Update: Returns Slowly Increasing As Higher Risk Loans Added

By Peter Anderson 7 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 December 11, 2020.

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I‘ve been investing in Lending Club for a couple of years now, and so far I’ve been extremely happy with the returns that I’ve seen. I’ve been getting a good return on my money, more than I would get in a high yield savings account,  while at the same time helping others to get loans at lower rates than they might have otherwise been able to obtain.  It’s a great way to consolidate higher-interest debt.  If you were to ask me, I think peer-to-peer lending is here for the long haul.

Check out my original Lending Club review and my post on my Lending club investing strategy.

I haven’t done an update for a few months to talk about how my investments at Lending Club are doing, so today I thought I would do an update on the returns I’m now seeing since I’ve started taking on riskier loans (non A or B grade loans).

Lending Club Returns Improving

So here’s a quick look at my numbers that I’m seeing.

  1. My Net Annualized Return is 9.64%:  Up from 9.57% last month, that number puts me in the 42nd percentile.   That means my return is higher than 42% and lower than 58% of all investors.  I’m slowly improving on this by diversifying into some higher rate loans.
  2. Zero defaults:  I do currently have one loan in 31-120 day grace period, and it is the second time for this loan.  The loan originally started out as an A grade investor with a credit score over 750.  If you look at the borrower’s credit score now, it has dropped drastically. This late loan may end up being my first default in 2 years, but the borrower does seem to be making an effort to stay in touch.
  3. Five loans have been paid off early over the last year:  Three were A grade loans, and the other two were C grade loans.
  4. My account balance has continued to increase as I become more comfortable with using Lending Club as part of my investing strategy.  I currently have $1787.35 in my account, and I’m slowly adding more most months.
  5. I’m still diversified by investing across a large number of loans with no more than $25 in each loan.  That way if I do have defaults, while my return may go down, my risk will be minimized.

While my returns thus far have been pretty decent, I know I can do better.  If you look at where I land, I’m squarely in the middle of the pack for the returns I’m seeing, so there is plenty of room for improvement.  How you might ask?  By investing in lower graded loans, but only ones that don’t seem to be as much risk as you might think based on their grade.

Investing In Low-Grade Loans

I recently read several posts by reader Matt who had started investing in lower grade borrowers who he deemed to be acceptable risks.  The loans he chose were Grade C or D for the most part, and while their credit scores weren’t necessarily the best, Matt felt that they were acceptable investment risks because they all had good professions, solid job history and security, and good payment histories.   In a recent post, he discussed his strategy.

Over the past two to three months, I’ve shifted my risk to Grade C notes and higher. This is perceived to be higher risk based on the borrowers FICO score, however, I would argue the risk of many of these higher credit risk loan applicants is less than or equal to Grade A & B loan applicants simply based on their profession, job history, job security, payment histories, etc. My theory is those who keep their jobs, and have a solid history of repaying their debts, will repay their Lending Club loan.

So far the strategy has worked well for him.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been testing the waters with this strategy to see if I can get my net annualized return up above 11-12% based on his suggestions in his Lending Club investing club.  So far I’ve chosen another 10-15 loans based off of his suggestions, and my returns are slowly rising. Nowhere near the 11-12 percent I am aiming for, but they are going up.  Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be near the 15.03% Matt is currently seeing.

Here’s where my NAR stands now, slightly below average. I hope to move up a couple of columns there:

Lending Club Strategy

My strategy I used in the past for Lending Club, and the strategy I’ll still be using to some degree:

  • Less than $10,000:  I believe I’ll still be sticking with mostly loans below $10,000. Lower amounts mean a higher likelihood of payback of the loan.
  • A & B credit rating:  This is where I’m straying a bit, accepting loans for borrowers with poor FICO scores, but otherwise good histories and employment situations.
  • 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.  I’ll try to keep this as is.
  • Loans over 60% funded:  When other people have invested in the loan,  a lot of the times that means that they’re a better risk because others have done their due diligence and agreed to invest.  Not always the case though so be careful.
  • Borrower answers to investor questions: I like to ask questions from potential borrowers. You can tell a lot about someone, and about how they’ll do repaying the loan,  by how they answer the questions.

So that’s the basic strategy that I’m using to invest in Lending Club right now.  What strategy are you using to invest?  I’m curious to know what is and isn’t working for all of my readers.

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

So where do you think my new Lending Club investing philosophy will take me? Will it lead to better returns, or will it mean more defaults and higher risk?  Tell me your thoughts in the comments -and tell us about your own experience with Lending Club!

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    My Lending Club returns have continued to improve since I started adding higher risk loans for people with lower credit scores, but good jobs and…

  • Lending Club Returns At 12.02%: Lending Club Has Issued Over 775 Million In Loans To Date

    My Lending Club account has continued to show good returns despite having another late loan. Lending Club has continued their growth and they have now…

  • 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: 11th December 2020 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, 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

    Share Your Thoughts: Cancel reply

  1. Matt SF says

    Thanks for the shout out Peter!

    Reply
  2. None says

    Just an FYI – I believe statistically the max loan amounts ($25k) had the lowest default rate for LendingClub. At least that was what I saw when I investigated it 1.5 years ago.

    Investing in smaller loans is not necessarily safer.

    Reply
  3. KH says

    how is the “Net annualized return” calculated. Does it compare to an APY for the total amount that you lend?

    Reply
  4. Mr. Broke Professional says

    Thank you for detailing this program. I have heard about it but never really read a clear analysis of what is involved and the different options one can take if they are part of the program. You can’t really complain about a nearly 10% return, particularly because you are investing in human capital and bringing about positive change through the lending.

    I really enjoyed the post and thank you for checking my site out the other day as well.

    Reply
  5. Jason L says

    Hi Peter. I’m a LendingClub user myself as well… not sure if your’e aware, but generally somewhere between months 9-12, you might see a dip in the rate of return. The reason for this is because that’s typically when some of the loans you’ve given out will start defaulting. I know this because a LendingClub rep called me to give me a “heads-up” about it, so that I shouldn’t be shocked to see my current rate (about 12% right now), take a bit of a dip.

    Anyway, thanks for sharing all of this info. Just wanted to let you know about this expected dip if it’s not something you already discussed with your LendingClub rep.

    Jason

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      so far i have no defaults and I’m over a year in – although some of the riskier loans are newer – so we’ll see what happens once they reach that one year point. Hopefully they won’t have problems – but i’m expecting at least some..

      Reply
  6. The Fire Finder says

    I looked at using a lending service once to make better returns but I just got scared. Thanks for the post. Maybe I will give it a try.

    Reply
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