A Lending Club fan who created a research firm to independently rate Lending Club's loans discusses how he unearthed unusual characteristics in some loans on the platform.
In all, Sims’s model has identified about 30,000 loans that were likely taken out by repeat borrowers—information the company has never disclosed but would be valuable to investors, since it could help show if a borrower is overextended. (Prosper, unlike Lending Club, discloses this information.) Because borrowers could be tapping multiple marketplaces at the same time, such data could show shareholders and regulators if this modern form of marketplace lending is riskier than they think. On the other hand, because Lending Club makes most of its money by charging fees to borrowers and investors and doesn’t carry many loans on its balance sheet, it has limited incentive to implement such controls.