Lending Club, a service that allows members to make loans to one another, is becoming an increasingly popular platform for individuals looking to make alternative investments. The company is part of an industry known as peer to peer lending and offers the ability for investors to create their own collateralized debt obligations. Both Lending Club and its competitor Prosper.com have periodically have been offering bonuses when you deposit additional funds to make loans with.
Lending Club is a marketplace which allows users of its website to make loans to one another. Instead of putting money into a savings account and indirectly loaning it to other people through the bank and earning a paltry 1% rate of return, Lending Club allows savers to loan money directly to people wanting to take out loans without the bank taking a large percentage of the rate of return off the top.
As an investor, you can choose which borrowers you would like to loan money to and how much you would like to loan to them. You can view information about their credit history, employment situation and why they want to take out a loan. Loans are typically given interest rates between 9% and 20%, allowing you to earn a very competitive rate of return on your money.
From time to time, Lending Club’s marketing department will offer a bonus, typically in an email to existing investors, which will allow you to earn anywhere from a 1% to a 5% bonus on your money. In a recent bonus email which was sent out, investors that deposited $1,000 received a $50 bonus on their deposit, resulting in an instant 5% rate of return for the first year.
You can get in touch with Lending Club’s investor services periodically and ask them when any bonus offers might be coming via email. Typically Lending Club offered bonuses via email every few months, so it may pay to wait until a bonus email comes around to make additional lending club investments.
