Thursday, June 28, 2007

Peer to peer lending in Canada - CommunityLend

Canada's Globe and Mail has an interesting article about the peer to peer loan industry - Fast cash just a click away. After discussing the success of Prosper and Zopa, the article turns to the future of peer to peer lending in Canada.

From the article:

Toronto-based CommunityLend.com hopes to tap the estimated $110-billion (Canadian) unsecured consumer debt market in Canada as soon as this fall.

"You don't have to get dressed in a suit and sit in a stuffy office in front of a banker asking you all kinds of questions," said Michael Garrity, a former vice-president of marketing at Canada Post's online bill-payment division who co-founded CommunityLend with Colin Henderson, former head of online banking at Bank of Montreal.

"We provide an alternative with a rate that is completely formed by a free market," Mr. Garrity said. The company is awaiting licensing under a host of federal and provincial regulations.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have any news on when this will be available or if there are other options for Canadian citizens?

Matt said...

It doesn't look like there are many options right now for Canadian citizens. Looks like you might have to wait for this launch which they claim could be as early as this fall.

Anonymous said...

We are working hard right now to identify some emerging P2P Lending sites serving the Canadian market, of which there are a couple we know of that are in the early stages of development. We will publish news on them as it becomes available on www.sociallendingwatch.com

Unknown said...

I am interested in the raft of regulations mentioned. To me it appears most of the worlds p2p sites are operating without any Banking or Finance broking license etc. and only respect low level stuff like privacy laws; I wonder how long until governments around the globe decide to regulate p2p? The effort to get the raft of legal work done upfront may turnout to be very prudent. I know we are taking the same precautions in Australia with our product.

Anonymous said...

I think laws and regulations have really slowed the growth of P2P lending. Every state in the US has different laws. Prosper interest rates are different in each state and some states do not allow lending at all.

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