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Happy birthday to Zopa and welcome Japan

Posted by Giles at 6:45 am

Zopa is three years old today!

It isn’t just us who’s reached the grand age of 3 - today also marks the third birthday of peer-to-peer lending. We were the very first P2P company when we launched in 2005 and now, three years later there are more than 20 around the globe.

A few months ago I mentioned we were hoping to see Zopa in several interesting and rather exotic locations in 2008. Today I am thrilled to announce the formation of Zopa Japan KK, which will be led by Chairman Takeshi Yoneda and CEO Tatsuya Kuboi, both highly experienced and accomplished Internet financial services professionals. We look forward to helping even more people around the world enjoy the big benefits of cutting out the banks by borrowing and lending with other people instead.

The launch of Zopa Japan, along with the US and Italy last year, further strengthens our position as the leader in our field.

With recent average returns for lenders the best they have ever been at 8.1%, with some enjoying more than 10%, social lending has never looked so attractive. Borrowers continue to enjoy personal loan rates normally much lower than they can get from the banks, and despite months of turmoil in the credit markets, our state-of-the-art credit and affordability checks have maintained our remarkably low default rate at less than 0.1%.

Since we launched in March 2005, £20 million in unsecured personal loans have been arranged at Zopa in the UK. More recently growth has been boosted by the global credit crunch which is driving unprecedented demand for P2P personal loans as banks become less competitive and tighten their lending criteria. All of this has also pushed up returns to Zopa lenders to an all time high.

We’ve had a tremendous year. We reached 150,000 members in May, the Guardian named us as one of the “Top 10 dotcoms to watch” in July. October saw the arrival of listings , which has enabled our members to lend and borrow in a brand new way. (Remember we’re offering fee free listings today!) Towards the end of 2007 Zopa launched in the US and Italy. February 08 was our biggest ever month, with lenders enjoying rates of 8.1%. To top off our February nicely, we were listed as one of “the Googles of tomorrow” in an article in The Independent. We’ve also been short-listed for ‘Most Threatening Non-Bank Competitor’ in the 2008 Retail Banker International Awards and for Innovation in the 2008 Efma Retail Finance Awards. We’ll keep you posted on how we do.

With over 190,000 members in the UK alone and the launch of Zopa in 3 more countries, things are looking very exciting indeed for the year ahead.

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Countdown to our birthday

Posted by Amy at 3:55 pm

We’re getting a tad excited here in the office. Party poppers are on standby and silly hats are threatening to make an appearance. We’ll be three years old on Friday 7th (huzzah!)

If you have 3 minutes to spare (seeing as it’s our 3rd birthday..) what 3 words would you use to describe Zopa? You can jot them down below and we’ll be featuring our favourites in our next newsletter.

Posted in General | 7 Comments »

Read all about it!

Posted by Amy at 12:35 pm

What a great start to the day. The sun is shining, we are all unscathed after the earthquake last night and to top it off; today Giles appears in The Independent!

According to The Independent, we are one of “The Googles of tomorrow”. In an article which appears in the paper today Robert Jones, director of brand consultancy Wolff Olins explains the next generation of brands. “We’re too well-informed and too sceptical to believe in image. What brands have to do in the future is not create a big idea that people buy into, but be useful for people. The days of pure consumerism in the classic economic sense are over. Consumers are also creators, who interact with brands such as YouTube, and who make ethical rather than purely financial decisions when they’re buying things. This is the age of the post-consumer. There’s a French word for it: ‘consommacteur’.”

Giles goes on to explain “We took a practice that has been going on in communities around the world for centuries and created an online opportunity for it. We connect creditworthy borrowers with people who have some money that they would otherwise have used as investment funds or savings. By connecting the two parties directly, rather than via a bank, we can offer significant economic savings… We diversify a lender’s funds by dividing the full amount they want to lend into lots of mini-loans, and every loan a borrower receives is made up of contributions from lots of lenders…. “We’ve probably built a better-performing credit model than anyone else in the country because our bad debts are so minimal – less than 0.1 per cent.”

You can read the full article written by Tim Walker here and if you buy the newspaper, you even get to see a picture of Giles. That’s got to be worth a trip to your local newsagents!

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Watch out for those malfunctioning doors.

Posted by Amy at 2:12 pm

We saw an article today which tickled our funny bone. There appears to be a spate of malfunctioning doors hitting banks around the country. The latest sees a man being locked in his bank for over an hour and a half. This comes after a 5 year old boy walked into a ‘closed’ bank 19 hours after it was supposedly locked up for the weekend.

Next time you go into your bank, remember to take some supplies; you could be in there for a while!

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10% in 2010

Posted by Giles at 5:00 pm

The web has revolutionised pretty much everything and continues to do so, and ever since day one (and clearly for a good few days before then) at Zopa we’ve believed that the future of money is human and involves using the web to do things better. That’s why we’re particularly happy to see that a recent research report from Gartner predicted the following: 


“By 2010, social-banking platforms will have captured 10% of the available market for retail lending and financial planning.”



That’s just two years away. Now, we’re very nearly three years old (more on that to come) and in those first three years we’ve seen Social Lending (or Peer to Peer Lending as it’s also referred to) firmly establish itself as a new way to lend and borrow money in many different countries around the world.



Since we launched back in March 2005, we’ve grown substantially in the UK and gone on to launch in Italy and the US. As more and more people realise the potential of Zopa (and other similar companies that have since launched), then that 10% figure seems even more likely to us – especially given the relentless trend towards transparency and the ongoing struggle of the big banks to become so. 



Obviously James over at BankerVision cast some doubt over the prediction (he works at Lloyds TSB !!!) but with encouraging blog posts today from Johnnie Moore and Anthony Mayfield (who also looks at the extent to which Zopa is being talked about over at Money Saving Expert

and predicts a ‘tipping point’ for us soon in the UK) – we’re feeling particularly chuffed and excited today so we thought we’d share that with you. 



Here’s to 2010 and 10%, maybe even more!




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Share-A-Load

Posted by Amy at 11:41 am

We’re loving the idea of this - a new system in the Philippines that lets mobile users share their credit with each other and top each other up if they are running low. Using technology to enable human beings connect with each other and exchange valuable things? Hmmm . . . . that feels very familiar doesn’t it?

“Globe allows its users to send (via SMS) their phone credits or “loads” to others running low. The service costs PHP 1 (about US .024) for each transaction and is available to prepaid and postpaid Globe subscribers. Donors simply contact an automated number, punch in their pin code, the recipient’s number, and how much money they’re giving and both parties are notified upon receipt”.

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No January blues at Zopa

Posted by Giles at 4:11 pm

There has been a wide array of intriguing stories coming out of the Credit Crisis and I thought I’d share one which has more than a little irony…

Our biggest competitor - the banking industry - has just delivered the biggest boost to the Zopa business to date.

Yup, the very people we are trying to cut out to offer borrowers and lenders a better deal have been very busy driving both to us in record numbers.

The banks’ overzealous drive to expose themselves to debt – here or in the sub-prime markets of the USA – has caused the credit crisis and even led to a run on a British bank. Stock markets have been plummeting around the world and much of it is due to the scale of the banks’ mistakes.

So private investors, nervous of further falls are busy trying to find a more secure home for the money they are withdrawing from equities. A greater number than ever before are coming to Zopa because here they can get virtually risk free returns of 7% to more than 10%.

And because banks are desperate to find every way they can to recoup the losses they have suffered, they are putting up the rates they charge on loans and credit cards. This is making loans at Zopa look even cheaper than they normally do. So an increasing number of borrowers are flocking to Zopa to get the better personal loan rates we have on offer.

Having our major competitors driving up the number of both borrowers and lenders that come to us has just led to our best January ever. Sometimes, in the rather weird world we are now living, help comes from the most unlikely sources.

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Site maintenance tomorrow morning (1st February 2008)

Posted by Justin at 4:03 pm

We’ll be performing site maintenance tomorrow morning from 6am for around 2 hours. The site will be unavailable while the IT team are busy tinkering. Thank you for your patience and understanding while the work takes place.

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Pence, not pounds

Posted by Justin at 8:09 pm

We’ve experienced a problem with the handover from our old banking system to our new one, which has caused a problem with some of the borrower repayments currently processing this month.

Unfortunately, due to teething problems with the software and good old human error, repayments which are usually requested in pence, were requested in pounds.

The error was soon spotted and we quickly sent a communication to the affected borrowers’ banks canceling the repayment. For any borrowers who did become liable for charges because of this mistake, we have instructed the banks to remove the charges upon the borrower, as this was clearly an error at our end. All affected borrowers have been contacted directly with an email letting them know what to do.

Please do get in touch with us if this payment is collected or if you have any questions whatsoever.

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We love banks (because their staff love us!)

Posted by Tanya at 2:06 pm

We have always claimed that a loan from Zopa represents great value for anybody in search of an unsecured personal loan.

This week, we were doing some new analysis on our customers (we always want to understand how we can better meet our users’ needs). And we discovered some amazing proof.

It turns out that scores of people have recently taken out an unsecured loan with us even though they work in a bank. Yes, lots and lots of folks, who are sometimes even entitled to get a staff discount on their employers’ own loan products, have found that Zopa loans are still the best deal.

Here is just one quote from a borrower.

‘I am full time employment with HSBC. Staff loan rates not as good as Zopa !!

I prefer to have an ‘open’ payback method, to allow me to pay extra monthly payments to my bills when I have the spare cash to do so…

And found banks just want a fixed monthly payment.

I like the concept of Zopa because it feels like I am entering a contract on an equal basis. I do not have that feeling when dealing with a bank or building society. I appreciate the ability to repay early because circumstances can change.

I just think this Zopa thing is a fabulous idea, everybody wins, people get higher rates for their investments and lower rates for their borrowing and we cut out the banks-it’s a superb idea!’

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Site maintenance tomorrow morning (24th January 2008)

Posted by Tristan at 12:20 pm

In a change to the planned maintenance of the 23rd, we’ll now be performing site maintenance on January 24th from 4am for around 5 hours. During this time, the site will be unavailable. Thank you for your patience and understanding while the work takes place and we apologise for the change around. If you have any urgent queries, please get in touch here contactus@zopa.com

Posted in Changes, General, Bugs and problems, Problems | No Comments »

Making Zopa even better in 2008

Posted by Tristan at 12:49 pm

So, 2008 kicked off rather relentlessly didn’t it? After launching in Italy just under a week ago, in the US at the end of last year and Listings in the UK, we’ve been non stop here in the UK planning all sorts of exciting things for the rest of the year and making Zopa even better.

Amidst all the serious stuff, we’ve also somehow found the time to create our own Facebook application. Called People Like You, it lets you compare your personality with other people, and shows you the people we know are like you. Simple really. And who knows, you may even find some interesting people like you to poke?! It might not help you get a loan as it’s really just a bit of fun, but if it helps more people discover Zopa and reap the benefits of peer to peer lending then all the better we think.

Whilst we’re on the subject, remember we also have an ‘official’ Facebook group and we’re thinking about setting up our own Page so you can help spread the word about Zopa. Then we’ll have real fans and everything.

Finally, a quick apology. We have been rubbish at keeping this blog updated when we’re busy. Noted and in hand so do get in touch if you think there’s anything you’d like us to post about.

Right, back to that serious stuff . . more on that soon.

Posted in Changes, New stuff, General, America | 1 Comment »

Jobs, get your fresh jobs here

Posted by Tristan at 6:33 pm

We’re growing and need more hands on deck, if you’re interested in working for Zopa, check out the Jobs at Zopa page.

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Site down

Posted by Justin at 6:21 pm

We’ll be taking the site offline to give the database a spring clean from 10.30pm tonight. We’re expecting that the work will take 3 hours.

That is all.

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Money, It Is A-Changin’

Posted by Doug at 11:40 am

It’s not enough that we were the first peer-to-peer lending site on the planet, thanks to Richard, Dave, James, Giles, and Tim, back in March 2005. And it’s not enough that we’ve been the safest. This week, we become the most global. And the experience we pick up in each country around the world benefits every single Zopa member, by helping us keep things safe, fun, and meaningful.

So this week we’re launching in two new countries. In the United States, we’re launching a product that’s really new and different. And in Italy, we’re launching with a product that will be familiar to any member of Zopa UK. But even in the UK we’ve been changing - we launched Zopa Listings a month ago, and it’s going gangbusters!

Different countries, different products, same Zopa values. It’s a pattern you can expect from us going forward, as we adjust the Zopa idea for different regulatory and cultural contexts around the globe. (For example, in the US, we wanted to tap into the phenomenon of charitable giving, which is nearly $300B a year.)

Money has a long history of being a bad thing. With Zopa, we are going to change that. That’s why say we’re “making money human again”. And that doesn’t just mean the pound, either. But all around the world.

Posted in General | 4 Comments »