The Bankwatch

things I read yesterday … 06/23/2008

Monday, 23 June 2008 · No Comments

  • Anyone younger than about 30 doesn’t seem interested in having an email address period, let alone caring whether it’s hermanzweibel@rocketmail.com or whatever. My teenaged daughters and their friends never use email anyway — they text message (in which case all you need is a phone number) or they use Facebook messages as a way of communicating. I send them email and they never get it. Do they have email addresses? Yes, and they are a combination of their names, underscores, numbers and nicknames, and so on — and they couldn’t care less.

    tags: mathewingram, ymail, GenY, email

    • Anyone younger than about 30 doesn’t seem interested in having an email address period, let alone caring whether it’s hermanzweibel@rocketmail.com or whatever. My teenaged daughters and their friends never use email anyway — they text message (in which case all you need is a phone number) or they use Facebook messages as a way of communicating. I send them email and they never get it. Do they have email addresses? Yes, and they are a combination of their names, underscores, numbers and nicknames, and so on — and they couldn’t care less.
  • 2006 memo by Brad Garlinghouse re Yahoo being spread too thin

    tags: yahoo, garlinghouse

    • An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Full text of the document is below.
  • tags: moneyaisle, clblog, financial glossary

    • Education is one of the primary objectives of this blog. Occasionally we will explore and explain commonly used, and often misunderstood, banking terms. We recommend two resources that help define financial terms: Investor Words and Morgan Stanley.
  • Process for funding loans at Lending Club. Describes the relationship between lenders, borrowers, LC and Webbnak. Graphic contained in the Lending Club S-1 filing.

    tags: clblog, lending club, social lending platform

→ No CommentsCategories: research

EU to break down e-commerce borders

Sunday, 22 June 2008 · No Comments

In a reversal of usual government tendencies, the EU is planning to force companies to take a global perspective within the EU borders.

Finextra: EU to break down e-commerce borders

In a speech given in London, Kuneva said she will propose new legislation this autumn for creating an EU-wide set of rules governing online and in-store transactions. The “single, simple set of core rights and obligations” will make it easier to buy and sell across borders and bring down costs for shoppers.
…..

… will crack down on e-commerce companies that conduct business across member states but force customers to make purchases on country-specific Web sites.

xxx

→ No CommentsCategories: Europe

things I read yesterday … 06/21/2008

Saturday, 21 June 2008 · No Comments

→ No CommentsCategories: research

Ranking of Canadian online banking sites

Friday, 20 June 2008 · No Comments

Google have a cool new feature that I predict will dominate the currenty confused website measurement space.

trends.google.com/ and select websites.

I put in 4 of the 5 Canadian Banks online banking log in pages, and got this result.  TD are first with RBC second.  BMO and Scotia are third equal.  It would not let me include a 5th, CIBC, but they should be around same or slightly lower than BMO and Scotia.

Note I also tried the public sites of all the 5 banks, and intestingly they came in very similar suggesting (to me) that few people look at the public sites.

→ No CommentsCategories: Online Banking

“The proceeds we receive from the sale of each series of Notes will be designated by the lender members who purchased the Notes of that series to fund an unsecured consumer loan” | Lending Club

Friday, 20 June 2008 · 1 Comment

With that lengthy statement, we now see how Lending Club intend to operate their business as defined in their SEC S-1 filing today.

Some more detail here.

sv1 Lending Club S-1 filing

The proceeds we receive from the sale of each series of Notes will be designated by the lender members who purchased the Notes of that series to fund an unsecured consumer loan originated through our platform to an individual consumer who is one of our borrower members.
… …

A series of Notes will be issued only if and when the corresponding member loan closes and is funded. A member loan will close and be funded if the borrower member loan request has received full funding commitments, or if the borrower member chooses to accept partial funding of the loan request after receiving funding commitments for the loan request.

And this taken from the description of the lending platform:

About the
Loan Platform

Through our online platform, we allow qualified borrower members
to obtain unsecured loans with lower interest rates than they
could through credit cards or traditional banks. We also provide
our lender members with the opportunity to indirectly fund
specific member loans with credit characteristics, interest
rates and other terms the lender members find attractive by
purchasing Notes that in turn are dependent for payment on the
payments we receive from those borrower member loans. As a part
of operating our lending platform, we verify the identity of
members, obtain borrower members’ credit profiles from
consumer reporting agencies such as TransUnion, Experian or
Equifax and screen borrower members for eligibility to
participate in the platform. We also service the member loans on
an ongoing basis. See “About the Loan Platform.”
The Notes. Our lender members will have the
opportunity to buy Notes issued by Lending Club. Lender members
will be able to designate the particular member loan that they
want the proceeds of each Note they purchase to be used to fund.
The holders of Notes of each series will have the right to
receive their pro rata portion of principal and interest
payments on their Note but only if, and to the extent, that we
receive loan payments on the corresponding member loan, net of
our service charge.
The Notes will be special, limited obligations of Lending Club
only and not obligations of any borrower member. The Notes are
unsecured and holders of the Notes do not have a security
interest in the corresponding member loans or the proceeds of
those corresponding member loans.
Lending Club is obligated to pay principal and interest on each
Note in a series only if and to the extent that Lending Club
receives payments from the borrower member on the corresponding
member loan funded by the proceeds of that series, and such
borrower member payments will be shared ratably among all Notes
of the series after deduction of Lending Club’s service
charge and any unsuccessful payment fees, collection fees or
payments due to Lending Club on account of the portion of the
corresponding member loan, if any, funded by Lending Club in its
capacity as a lender on the platform. If Lending Club were to
become subject to a bankruptcy or similar proceeding, the holder
of a Note may have a general unsecured claim against Lending
Club that is not limited in recovery to such borrower payments,
but, as described in more detail below, the matter is not free
from doubt. See “Risk Factors — If we were to
become subject to a bankruptcy or similar proceeding.”

In essence it appears that Lending Club make loans to borrowers. Lending Club then issues notes to investors, corresponding with the loans to borrowers. Seems simple enough. The rest of the prospectus details the risks as expected in any prospecus, and has a great amount of detail in words and tables on FICO scores, expected default rates, and other statistical data.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Social Lending

things I read yesterday … 06/20/2008

Friday, 20 June 2008 · No Comments

→ No CommentsCategories: research

things I read yesterday … 06/19/2008

Thursday, 19 June 2008 · 2 Comments

→ 2 CommentsCategories: research

“What not to do in Social Media.” | The Foush

Wednesday, 18 June 2008 · No Comments

This from Rahaf blogging from the searchengine strategies conference highlights what I think of as the dark side of SEO, and social media marketing. It lists all the bad ideas, which can be summarised as anything fake or pretending to appear to be something. Its about meaningful conversation, and trust. Click through for her principles.

» Blog Archive » SES & Social Media Strategy: what happened to ethics?! (A rant)

The internet has a short attention span and a long memory. Be smart. Treat your consumers like idiots and they won’t stick around for long.

→ No CommentsCategories: Marketing

SEO | 28% of Google search clicks on paid

Wednesday, 18 June 2008 · 3 Comments

A very full and complete article on the power of search and relationship to purchasing. The lead stat is the fact that 28% of clicks on a Google search page go to the pad search items.

Click through for Joey’s excellent summary of Fredrick Marckini’s keynote presentation at searchengine strategies conference in Toronto this week.

» Fredrick Marckini’s Keynote at Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto » The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century : Joey deVilla’s Personal Blog

72% of all clicks were in the natural results section; the remaining 28% were in the paid.

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Marketing

things I read yesterday … 06/17/2008

Tuesday, 17 June 2008 · No Comments

→ No CommentsCategories: research