The Lending Well @ www.thelendingwell.com

The Lending Well

The Lending Well previously offered a payday loan peer to peer service through www.thelendingwell.com with their launch occurring in 2012. This product was closed in late March 2013 due to an unsuccessful attempt to make the P2P payday loan concept workable. They had of course taken their inspiration from Zopa who have enjoyed considerable success since launching. They allow everyday people to lend out of their own pocket that then gets thrown into a large pool for a return. Zopa has always focussed on prime lending whereby their clients have a good credit history (creating minimal defaults). They recently quoted a default rate of just 0.03%.

The default rate in this sector has been reported to range between 10% and 20%. With this data in mind, it is no surprise to see that problems would have been faced here. PiggyBank was another company to try out P2P in this industry, but they soon adapted to lend their own cash. If you visit www.thelendingwell.com just now they are merely collecting emails and they have previously stated that they will be returning, although this will be within a new market. When The Lending Well was active they promised a 12% return. £100 to £750 was available across flexible terms of 10 to 31 days.

The interest was set well at 1% daily and if fast cash was required then a £6 charge was in place to make this quick transmission happen. The website included secure logins and the design of it was impressive with them using Wickedweb to create this. I do think that we will see this brand returning soon, although just what they will come up with remains unclear at this time. I wasn’t too sure why they didn’t just follow in the footsteps of PiggyBank and just lend directly themselves. They could have even perhaps raised the eligibility requirements and made the P2P side of their business as being optional.