zopa

kingkopite1892

has anyone used zopa for a personal loan?
i'm a bit sceptical about using them?

27col

Why are you sceptical? As a Zopa lender it all seems fairly straight forward to me.

Tom_Pickering

27col wrote: »

Why are you sceptical? As a Zopa lender it all seems fairly straight forward to me.

What sort of returns are you getting and have you suffered bad debts?

kingkopite1892

i'd just never heard of it that was all. i suppose if anything its the banks i shouldnt trust, can i ask how long youve been a lender on zopa?

the-boss_2

kingkopite1892 wrote: »

has anyone used zopa for a personal loan?
i'm a bit sceptical about using them?

I'm a borrower with Zopa. Applied a couple of weeks ago. Filled out the form, etc then Two days later One of their Underwriters phoned me asking for a little more info regarding my employment. I emailed them my last Pay Slip, 10 Minutes later i had an email back from them saying i had been accepted and the Money would be in my Bank account within 3-5 working day's. It arrived 3 working day's later.

I too was sceptical but i gave them a try as they were quoting the lowest rates on Moneysupermarket.com and their initial Credit Search on me was what they call a "soft Search" which means it would have no adverse affect on my credit file if i was rejected. I also read many positive reviews about them. I also liked the fact that my repayments and interest were going back to "real" people and not the Greedy Banks.

All in all a good service i'd say.

patman99

The one thing I would say is that the rate you will be offered will vary depending on the time of day and how much cash there is to be lent. I did a trial application at 14:00 and was quoted 11%, then again at 22:00 and was quoted 9.75%.

I am a Zopa lender, but was contemplating a loan in order to replace my car.

Their rates beat the best I could get from the Banks by a good 5%.

paddyrg

also look at yes-secure and ratesetter, they're all peer-lending.

yes-secure is very social networky, zopa you know a bit more about borrowers and make your own assessments in the markets, and ratesetter is all anonymised with a fund to cover bad debt - all work a bit differently, but all work.

patman99

Don't forget, all social lending sites are like a room full of strangers. You go in, present your loan request and some of them will decide to loan you differing amounts at differing rates. It's a bit like Dragons Den with tons more people.

27col

If you go to the Zopa web site it says what the average returns are for the different lending categories. At least they are better than I could get in the bank. I have had one bad debt out of about 60 or more borrowers, which I am not very happy about. Although the default is only a late payment at the moment.

I've just checked my Zopa account and it seems that the late payment was due to the borrower dying. We are awaiting news from the executors. I suspect that this will be a long time coming.

jamesd

I've both borrowed and lent via Zopa. The main issues borrowing have been direct debits taken early. In my case for bank holidays and when switching the bank account the direct debit came from, which prompted a DD a full month before the date I was given when setting it up.

Now is one of the least good times to borrow via Zopa. Best to wait until Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday next week when more of the end and start of the month payment money has arrived. That's added to lender accounts between 9PM and 10PM generally so you may get some better rates a little after then.

Watch out for the Zopa fee if you're only borrowing a few thousand. It adds a lot to the APR. It's worse if you plan to overpay because the APR is calculated over the full term and effectively goes up if you overpay.

Barclaycard has a quotation search that lets you check what cards of theirs you might get. If you can get one with a 0% deal for a nice term that'll probably beat any of the loans you can get.

the-boss wrote: »

I also liked the fact that my repayments and interest were going back to "real" people and not the Greedy Banks.

Did you know that for a median size loan in the best markets about 40% of the total amount paid for credit is the borrowing fee and lender fees paid to Zopa, not those "real" people? Zopa isn't a Greedy Bank, though.

krippo

And what do You think about Zopa as investment?
Do You think it is profitable to using this website to lend money to other people?