Both Prosper Marketplace and Lending Club have made statements in the last day that they are the largest peer to peer lending company in the world.
Prosper Marketplace released a statement on its blog asserting that it “maintains approximately two-thirds of the U.S. peer-to-peer lending market” and is the “largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace worldwide.”
San Francisco-based Prosper noted on its blog that the company has seen a total of $1.8 billion in loan demand and noted that it had passed $1 billion in loan demand in March of 2008, a milestone that Lending Club recently passed.
Prosper starts its marketplace in November 2005, whereas Lending Club started its marketplace in May of 2007. Although Prosper has had a head start and still has originated more loans than its competitor, Lending Club is now originating far more in loans each month than Prosper and uses that as a basis for its claim to the throne of being the largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace.
Lending Club asserted on its blog today that it setup $8,664,750 million in consumer loans during the month of March and that the activity on its marketplace represented 79% of the peer-to-peer loans issued in the United States during the month of March.
Prosper Marketplace can rightfully say that it has the largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the world in the sense that it has setup the most loans in its history, however comparing activity within the last few months, it’s clear that Lending Club has far more momentum in terms of loan growth than Prosper does.
Lending Club has been consistently setting up more than $8 million in loans monthly during the last 6 months whereas Prosper Marketplace has had trouble in setting up more than $2 million in monthly loans during the same period of time.
