LendingClub is an American peer-to-peer lending company, headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was the first peer-to-peer lender to register its offerings as securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and to offer loan trading on a secondary market. At its height, LendingClub was the world's largest peer-to-peer lending platform. The company claims that $15.98 billion in loans had been originated through its platform up to December 31, 2015.
LendingClub is an American peer-to-peer lending company, headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was the first peer-to-peer lender to register its offerings as securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and to offer loan trading on a secondary market. At its height, LendingClub was the world's largest peer-to-peer lending platform. The company claims that $15.98 billion in loans had been originated through its platform up to December 31, 2015. LendingClub enabled borrowers to create unsecured personal loans between $1,000 and $40,000. The standard loan period was three years. Investors were able to search and browse the loan listings on LendingClub website and select loans that they wanted to invest in based on the information supplied about the borrower, amount of loan, loan grade, and loan purpose. Investors made money from the interest on these loans. LendingClub made money by charging borrowers an origination fee and investors a service fee. LendingClub also makes traditional direct to consumer loans, including automobile refinance transactions, through WebBank, an FDIC-insured, state-chartered industrial bank that is headquartered in Salt Lake City Utah. The loans are not funded by investors but are assigned to other financial institutions. The company raised $1 billion in what became the largest technology IPO of 2014 in the United States. Though viewed as a pioneer in the fintech industry and one of the largest such firms, LendingClub experienced problems in early 2016, with difficulties in attracting investors, a scandal over some of the firm's loans and concerns by the board over CEO Renaud Laplanche's disclosures leading to a large drop in its share price and Laplanche's resignation. In 2020, Lending Club acquired Radius Bank and announced that it would be shutting down its peer-to-peer lending platform. Existing account holders will continue to collect interest on existing notes until each loan is paid off or goes into default, but no new loans are available for individual investing. It is also no longer possible to sell existing loans through a secondary marketplace, as was once the case.