[cylinder]

Banks don't really care about these types of loans. They do their unsecured individual lending through credit cards. At the retail level they are more concerned with mortgages, HELOC, high net worth individuals, and collateralized business lending.

[pmorici]

Banks and institutional investors make up the majority of the money being loaned out. If you look at the S1 filing you will see that something like 80% of the money being loaned out isn't coming for individuals. It's coming from banks and institutions.

http://www.lendacademy.com/forum/index.php?topic=2612.msg225...

[iamchmod]

I agree - the notion that LendingClub is P2P is mostly PR hype. Sure an individual can put some capital to work. But most of their capital as pointed out above comes from institutions (mostly hedge funds). I had heard that 95% of their capital was institutional but I can't find a quote on that. P2P gets fantastic press tho and which in turn drives down new borrower acquisition cost.