The second Carnival of Peer-to-Peer Lending installment was hosted by BripBlap & included the following articles:

RateLadder dispenses some Not So Obvious Tips to Maximize Your Chance of Funding for Prosper borrowers (including neat graphical analysis of factors like listing time, duration, and description length), and also presents updated Prosper vintage curves (late rates, as of 1/1/08).

Pinyo at Moolanomy funds his Second P2P Loan on Prosper and muses about the relative benefits of Prosper’s portfolio plans – plus fends off a comment derailment concerning the ethics of lending & borrowing money (online or off) from someone trying to (wait for it!..) sell a book about the evils of lending & borrowing money (online or off).

Tom of Prosper Lending Review scores an Interview with Chirag Chaman of Fynanz, a new Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending startup that aims to take a bite out of the traditional student loan market. Very interesting to see P2P expanding in this direction, but no word on the most important question that will undoubtedly affect the dynamics of this market and whether it will go beyond just “friends and family”: Will these P2P Student Loans be just like any other unsecured debt and dischargeable in bankruptcy, or can (a much larger market of) lenders expect (and price for) these loans to be federally certified and therefore non-dischargeable?

WiseClerk channels Nostradamus and makes some predictions about the P2P Lending space in 2008. No quatrains, sadly, but still some interesting ideas regarding possible insurance products and Peer-to-Peer market expansions.

Brett at PersonalLoanPortfolio wonders Why Lending Club Denies Most Loans. This is a very interesting question, and one that I’ve asked Lending Club about in the recent past. Rob from Lending Club stops by to assure lenders that loans which are not old enough to have a payment due will no longer be included in performance calculations, as well as to explain why Lending Club has only accepted about 11% of borrower applications thus far, citing a committment to marketplace safety – though I do have to wonder if the extremity of that figure doesn’t have more to do with Lending Club’s palpable lack of guidance in the borrowing process.

DoughRoller Overcomes His Fear and Lends on Prosper.com through a process of reasoned analysis and a commitment to go slowly, and decides that Portfolio Plans will make his investing much less emotion-based. We’ll check back with him after his Portfolio Plan bids with no compunction on a listing whose text includes the word “desperate” (grossly misspelled).

Hey Prosper Lenders! Question from a Borrower.. from Amanda @ Me vs Debt, wonders aloud how lenders feel about the availability of additional loans within the Prosper marketplace. (My advice is to disclose it in your listing – since Prosper discloses it anyway! – and let the bids fall where they may.)

Rounding out the pack, MoneySmartLife offers an Overview of P2P Lending.

That wraps up the 2nd Carnival of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending – anyone want to try to knock over some bowling pins? Just $1 a ball!

Lending Club, the peer-to-peer lending site, is offering a 5% cash-back bonus to lenders who lend $5,000 or more by February 3rd, 2008.

OK, that sounds neat, but what if you have access to a fair amount of capital -and- a fair number of friends with good credit who you’d trust to loan a large amount of money to for a short term? If you think like me, that slight “wait a minute!” w/accompanying head tilt = Game On!

Time for big math: For every $25,000 you lend out, you’ll get $1250 credited to your account on February 15th, 2008. Why, that’s free money!

This is an incredible deal for the properly positioned, but first the details: You must lend $5,000 to qualify for the 5% bonus. Once you hit the $5,000 mark, the 5% bonus applies to the initial $5,000 as well. You must lend this money out by February 3rd, 2008. The loans do not have to be issued by that date, but your portfolio plan (essentially, your “bid” or “bids”) must be placed by that date. Lending Club will credit your account with the 5% bonus as CASH BACK (whether you choose to lend this money out, or transfer it back to your checking account is up to you!) on Friday, February 15th, 2008.

That’s the promotion in a nutshell, but there are some important details that will affect your 5% bonus:

Depending on the credit grade of the borrower, Lending Club takes an origination fee from the principal amount of the loan (deducted from the amount the borrower receives). They also take a 1.00% payment servicing fee on all incoming payments, so that’s another 1.00% off your 5% bonus. But, here’s the sweet part: There are NO early payment or pre-payment penalties!

Here’s a table that lays out the fees (and expected return) on any monies lent to borrowers of a particular credit grade:

You can also make an additional $25 by signing up for your Lending Club account through my referral link below (I’ll get $25, too). If you sign up using the referral link and make an initial deposit of at least $1,000, then you’ll get a $50 bonus instead! And, if you have your borrower (ie, Mom) sign up through this link, she’ll make an additional $25 as well. Sweet, huh?

Click here: LendingClub $25/$50 Bonus Referral Link for Lenders & Borrowers

Once you click the referral link, your referral will be tracked only for that session. So you must not close your browser or navigate away from the LendingClub web site before signing up for an account. If you do, the referral will not track (bye bye bonus!), so you must come back and click this link again and sign up in the same session to qualify. Sign up quickly! The promotion ends on February 3rd, and it takes about a week to verify your lending account and move funds in to lend!

One last note, LendingClub.com has capped this promotion at $20,000 per lender, so you can only lend out (and make the 5% bonus on) a maximum of $400,000. Sucks, huh? You know, unless Mom wants to lend, too… Let the games begin!

Promotion details available at: http://blog.lendingclub.com/thank-you and http://blog.lendingclub.com/2008/01/17/update-on-the-thank-you-program

(Note: These are not referral links, and if you sign up through these links, no sweet free money for you – or me either!)