Peer-to-Peer Lending Firm, Lending Club, recently launched several new features for investors using the service which will help them better diversify the loans that they fund in hopes of generating higher and more consistent returns.
The long-awaited releases of new loan searching features went live at the end of October and aim to make it easier for investors to find the loans that they want to invest in and create a diversified portfolio based on how much risk you as an investor would like to take on.
The new investor tools provide a way for consumers that fund Lending Club loans to search for loans they might want to fund based on specific types of loans, such as home improvement projects, automobile loans, student loans, business loans, and vacation loans. Investors will also be able to filter out loans and show only the loans that have been approved for funding.
In a statement made by the company, Rob Garcia, the company’s director of protect strategy commented, “The challenge for the new investor tools was to balance simplicity and control. The portfolio builder makes it fast and easy to invest in a diversified portfolio while the 25+ filters available give investors the ultimate control to decide which kinds of notes to invest in.” The newly released investor tools allow investors to choose how much they want to invest and then choose a predetermined investment strategy or a specific rate of return.
With the newly released investor tools released by Lending Club, diversifying one’s loan is as simple as choosing what risk and what rate of return you’d like to receive. Perhaps the most useful part of these portfolios is that investors can apply the same filters mentioned above to block specific types of loans that have higher default rates than others from becoming part of your portfolio.
After choosing candidate loans for your portfolio, you can review the various loan grades, predicted default rate, and projected rate of return. After that, you can review the loans individually or invest in them with one click.
Overall, these new features will make it much easier for p2p investors to diversify their loans and at least, theoretically, bring them a much more consistent rate of return.
Here’s a video released by Lending Club explaining the new features: