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Lending Club Loans: Separating the ‘Wheat from the Chaff’

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I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

- Thomas Jefferson.

Like all things in life, if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do a little bit of work, the chances of something good happening are in your favor. It doesn’t happen every time, but chances are, you’ll be rewarded on a regular basis if you work intelligently and persistently.

Case in point, this stellar loan application from a Lending Club borrower in search of small business funding. Had I not been actively searching for loan applications using my Lending Club spreadsheet filtering method (which contains every “in funding” loan application in the database), I doubt I would have found it.

Small Business Loan: Marketing Director opening a Paintball Course.


click to enlarge images

Here’s why I, and those who saw my #P2PLending tweet (note the Twitter hashtag), loved it so much:

  • High credit score: 750 – 779.
  • Fairly small loan: $13,800.
  • Low monthly payment: $336/month.
  • High salary: > $100k earner.
  • Has some seniority at his job: a Marketing Director with 8 years at a Silicon Valley company.
  • No history of past delinquencies or public records.
  • Has virtually no existing credit card debt.
  • Debt to Income is < 10%.

His personal finance metrics are about as perfect as a Lending Club investor can ask for, in my opinion, and meets my Lending Club investment strategy on every criterion. Plus, being a marketing director (see loan description), he has the professional skill set and, more than likely, the contact list to promote his new business before the place even opens.

Personally, I’m not a huge proponent of investing in small business loans because, generally, borrowers are taking out additional credit to support an unproven business idea, most borrowers fail to give enough detail about their small business idea to my liking, nor do they have the extra income to cover the monthly payments if their business tanks. However, in this case, this borrower’s loan application looks about as perfect as you can get.

Only time will tell is my thesis is correct, but borrowers of this quality is just one more example of why I consider actively searching for Lending Club notes versus the passive investing option a superior strategy. In other words, the harder I work at finding superior borrowers, the more “lucky” I get in finding them.


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