Anyone know anything about Zopa?

helsan

So...I was reading through BBC news a few days ago and found an article about a website named Zopa.
From what I have gathered, its basically, a loans site, but the money lent come from normal people looking to make some extra money via interest by lending it out - no banks or bank charges involved.

I was just wondering if anybody knew anything about the site, or has borrowed/lent from it?

Thanks,
Helen

zzxxcc1122

yep the almost never give out loans i tried as have several others and thye seem to always refuse

Apples2

They lend to people most likely to repay the loan.

If you have a bad credit history, you would not fall into this category.

helsan

hmm. interesting.
So reputable, not scam? You can't help but wonder about such things these days!

laurel7172

I'm a very small-scale Zopa lender-I put a little bit in each month.

It always gets lent out, so *somebody* must be getting loans-sorry . But when you look at the "New members" page, hopeful new borrowers usually outnumber new lenders by about ten to one, while the average amount a lender invests is only about £2500. I guess a lot of loan requests must be getting turned down.

Can you be more specific about what you'd like to know? Are you a potential borrower or lender?

Southernman

Wow, i didn't realise ZOPA was run by individuals who lend. Tell me a little bit about the way it works as a lender, the risks and also if the website charge a commission and if so how much?

BugsyBrowne

Zopa are fine but there are better rates out there.

laurel7172

The website charges 1%.

Potential borrowers are divided into categories according to their credit rating. You set your own interest rate in each category, taking account of the expected bad debt rate and what borrowers are willing to pay. The bad debt risk is yours, but you spread that risk by lending only £10 to each person.

Really, the website can explain it better than I can But do think carefully about the returns in each rating category. To me, if I can earn 7% after charges in a category with 0.5% default risk, there's no way I'm going to consider 8.5% after charges in a category where the default risk is 6%.

http://uk.zopa.com/

helsan

laurel7172 wrote: »

I'm a very small-scale Zopa lender-I put a little bit in each month.

It always gets lent out, so *somebody* must be getting loans-sorry . But when you look at the "New members" page, hopeful new borrowers usually outnumber new lenders by about ten to one, while the average amount a lender invests is only about £2500. I guess a lot of loan requests must be getting turned down.

Can you be more specific about what you'd like to know? Are you a potential borrower or lender?

Well...potential borrower at the moment, tho I would defintely look into both sides eventually.
Mostly i was just curious as to how genuine the site was, and whether people had had positive experiences with it

27col

I am a Zopa lender, and I can tell you that as far as I am concerned, they can refuse as many potential borrowers as they like. They are stringent because they are not lending their money, but mine and thousands of people like me. I certainly don't want my money lent out to possible defaulters. Any money that I have to loan was hard earned by me and I don't take kindly to others who borrow and then don't pay me back. I have been lucky so far and only had one defaulter out of 118 loans made. Zopa charge the lenders 1% and the borrowers a fixed fee. I am not sure what the fee is, but the website will tell you. You can pay back early without penalty. It all seems very above board to me, if I had the slightest suspicion that it was not, I and many other lenders would withdraw our funds. It is all about trust and defaulters are abusing that trust.

reallyAnnoyed_2

hmmm interesting! How it works for lender? Is there any minimum or maximum limit a lender can invest?