Total Amount Loaned Out By Zopa So Far Options

[German Manager]

Somebody please point me in the right direction:

Wasn't there some place on the Zopa website stating who much money was lent out by Zopa since the launch till today?

[Carrybridge]

Yes, a good question. I'd also like to know how many lenders there are, what is the average amount of capital offered, how many borrowers are there, what is the most popular amount to borrow (could probably work that out for the last month from the lending excel spreadsheet) and how many unsuccessful applications have been made (daily, weekly, monthly)? All this would add to my decision making process, at present I haven't the faintest!

[mosshill]

I'd also like to know how many lenders there are, what is the average amount of capital offered

Only Zopa can give you the borrowing stats and if they tell us then they also tell all our competitors, but on the lenders side the following may be of interest to you (source = yesterdays spreadsheet download)

There were 1,222 lenders in the market (down from about 1,700 in December)

The top 8 lenders provide 25% of all capital in the market

The top 22 lenders account for 40% of all capital in the market

The remaining 1,200 lenders have an average capital on offer of £470

This post has been edited by mosshill: Feb 24 2007, 08:36 AM

[Carrybridge]

Thanks, I'll work a lot out from those couple of snippets, although I appreiciate the commercially sensitive nature of my thoughts too.

[roger_at_zopa]

Thanks, I'll work a lot out from those couple of snippets, although I appreiciate the commercially sensitive nature of my thoughts too.

The thing is that Zopa may as well be open about the market and what's going on. Any major competitor just has to place £15-20K into Zopa and lend it out at a lower than average rate to get a feel for what is going on as they will end up lending to 99% of all the borrows. From the data that Zopa does publish to each lender someone involved in 99% of all loans would have a very clear idea of what is going on across the whole business.

[nickjpp]

Talking about statistics ZOPA says Borrower Demand over the last 7 days has been £38M - yes that is 38 million pounds! I take that to mean that borrowers have applied for new loans totalling £38M in the last seven days and frankly I find that somewhat unlikely.

Just rechecked and that is the total for the C60 market alone. My calculator gave up at £100M when I tried to add up the individual markets.

Can anybody please explain where I am going wrong?

This post has been edited by nickjpp: Feb 24 2007, 04:56 PM

[mosshill]

On the home page you can get a quick quote without even bothering to log in.

I suspect that the sum of all these quick quotes is being reported, and if that is the case its not worth the pixels its printed with.

[studentloan]

The average lender is called David and lives in South West London. He's 38 and is 7 times more likely to be male than female lol and on averag lends £1252.

https://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/Pages/Secure/M...spx?page=market

The average borrower is also called david and is 41 and from Birmingham. He's 3 times more likely to be male than female and on average borrows £4193 for his new car

https://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/Pages/Secure/M...spx?page=market

I would like more stats too

[Stobby]

I thought about the original topic of this post for a while and think that i have an answer, assuming the data shown on the market screens is correct, and assuming that people don't both lend and borrow (which i know isn't true).

There are 132552 members at the time of writing, each borrower gets £4192 on average, and each lender gives £1242 on average.

So it takes 3.375 (=4192/1242) lenders to provide one loan to a borrower.

Which can then be taken as 4.375 members are involved in £4192 worth of loan.

So 132552/4.375 = 30287.6 loans taken out.

Thus the total amount loaned out by zopa so far is more than ... £127,000,000.

Any one got any comments, or am i way off?

Edit - I realised i have not taken into account the re-lending process, so in actual fact it is probably much much higher.

This post has been edited by Stobby: Mar 1 2007, 02:13 PM

[Deddington]

Stobby
You are assuming that every registered member goes on to be a lender or a borrower.
This will not be the case. By what factor I don't know but I would be surprised if Zopa was above £20m in loans yet.

[rak]

I think Stobby's calculations are clever, but I have to agree with Deddington on this one. It would work if maybe zopa told us the number of active members.

The way I see it is that Zopa maybe lends around £200,000 per week. I base this on the last market data spreadsheet which shows matched offers as £1.9m, of which maybe 50% turns into loans.

Zopa has been running now for about 2 years, so 100 weeks say.

£200k for 100 weeks is around £20m.

It might be a bit less than this if say the first 6 months or a year were a bit slower than £200k per week. Those who have been members longer than me may know the actual lending data for when zopa started.

[adilowes]

Basing on the number of members is a false way of doing it. When zopa first started they used to give you a credit rating score when you registered. The moneyexpert website run by Martin Lewis was advising people to register with zopa for a free credit check. That is how I heard of zopa. I went on to become a lender but the vast majority probably didnt. So actual members is very misleading but active members will probably be correct if zopa were to give that figure.

[Peterkins]

Talking about statistics ZOPA says Borrower Demand over the last 7 days has been £38M - yes that is 38 million pounds! I take that to mean that borrowers have applied for new loans totalling £38M in the last seven days and frankly I find that somewhat unlikely.

Just rechecked and that is the total for the C60 market alone. My calculator gave up at £100M when I tried to add up the individual markets.

Can anybody please explain where I am going wrong?

Now the three 60 month markets exceed £64Million - ?a new record?

These figures have been mentioned several times before as being very, very, very misleading, especially to new members who might well think it shows a "lender's market", with apparent demand vastly exceeding money on offer.

[Stobby]

Stobby
You are assuming that every registered member goes on to be a lender or a borrower.
This will not be the case. By what factor I don't know but I would be surprised if Zopa was above £20m in loans yet.

Surely everyone who signs up is classed as either a lender or a borrower? It shows it next to their name on the markets page.

I don't think it's too much of a leap to assume zopa would include every member in their average numbers. However after thinking about it some more, and calculating the sum of all the loan matches over the last 5 months, which is just shy of £10 million, I think you are probably right.

[nicktaylor]

You can sign up to Zopa without actually lending or borrowing money. From memory (though it's almost a year ago, so apologies if it's wrong), when you sign up you specify 'borrower' or 'lender', but I've no doubt there are a lot of people who've got this far but no money has changed hands.

[Carrybridge]

well, a couple of new places on the markets page, I didn't add them up except roughly but could there really be borrower demand of £200,000,000 in the last 7 days? Must be an awful lot of disappointed customers. And I see from the spreadsheet that some people have matched at 20%, I wouldn't have believed it possible, but i can see how that works.

[Peterkins]

Talking about statistics ZOPA says Borrower Demand over the last 7 days has been £38M - yes that is 38 million pounds! I take that to mean that borrowers have applied for new loans totalling £38M in the last seven days and frankly I find that somewhat unlikely.

Just rechecked and that is the total for the C60 market alone. My calculator gave up at £100M when I tried to add up the individual markets.

Can anybody please explain where I am going wrong?

Now the three 60 month markets exceed £64Million - ?a new record?

These figures have been mentioned several times before as being very, very, very misleading, especially to new members who might well think it shows a "lender's market", with apparent demand vastly exceeding money on offer.

Last "7 days" figures now getting very silly!

The 60 month markets now EACH exceed £330Million. So total requested in last 7 days exceeds £1Billion - so why are loans slowing down?

[chancer]

It's patent bollocks


The last five quotes in market A*12 were:
kwalters was quoted £1,000.00 at 4.99% on 12 Mar at 17:48
joanna24 was quoted £1,000.00 at 4.94% on 11 Mar at 11:23
osochog was quoted £7,000.00 at 5.88% on 4 Mar at 12:06
pgibson was quoted £2,000.00 at 5.21% on 22 Feb at 21:42
pclark362 was quoted £2,500.00 at 5.23% on 12 Feb at 08:37

The last 7 days demand in A*12 was £367,700


Clearly it was only £2,000


Come on Zopa, this has been broken for ages. Either fix it or pull it.

[dave]

I agree.

(Although what exactly is there to patent about bollocks? And who owns the patent anyway?)

I've asked Drew and Thomas to see about replacing the numbers we currently use with the actual loan applications from the last 7 days - the numbers will obviously be a lot smaller, but they will mean something.

If we can't do it quickly, we'll yank the screen until we have done it - although with their professional pride at stake, my money's on it being done sooner rather than later!

PS. Chancer - I saw your PM, let me have a mull and I'll get back to you - thank you.

[dave]

Done - thanks Thomas!