Zopa

rl290

There were, until a few months back, FAR more time-scales for loans (12, 24, 36, 48 and 60 months if I remember correctly), but Zopa got rid of them to make things less cluttered... you'll find a lot about this (including criticism) on the forums on the Zopa website.

For borrowers, there is not much difference - I believe they can repay early with no early redemption fee. For us lenders, it is a little annoying... but hey...

R

CoogarUK

rl290 wrote: »

There were, until a few months back, FAR more time-scales for loans (12, 24, 36, 48 and 60 months if I remember correctly), but Zopa got rid of them to make things less cluttered

Zopa got rid of the shorter term loans around the same time as they introduced the £94.25 fee for borrowers. I'm sure you can all do the maths and work out what that would have done to the APR on, i.e. a £1000 loan over 12 months (clue: it wouldn't have lowered it!)

Gorgeous_George

I agree that one outcome of limiting loans to 36 and 60 months would be to avoid the bad press that high APRs would have brought (following introduction of the £94.25 charge). A good thing for Zopa of course but also good for lenders. I assume the charge covers the administration costs of doing credit checks, setting up the loan and running the site.

I don't know what the percentage of 12 and 24 months loans would have been but 36 months seems a reasonable length to me. If anybody feels strongly about the need for shorter term loans maybe they'd liike to set up a rival site. Perhaps PayDay have already done it.

GG