Lending Club 2012 in Review. Part III: Loan Title, Loan Description and State of Residence

Continuing the year-end review of Lending Club loans issued in 2012 from Part I and Part II where I discussed Loan Volume, Amount Funded, Interest Rate, Credit Grade and Loan Purpose ...

Loan Title

In 2012, the number of loans issued in relation to number of characters in Loan Title continue to follow similar pattern as previous years. Almost 25% of loans issued in 2012 had exactly 18 characters in loan title. Almost 50% of loans issued had less than 17 characters and 90% had less than 24 characters.

Length of Lending Club Loan Title, Loan Volume, and Total Amount Funded

The most popular 18 characters loan titles in 2012 are listed below. Considering 77% of all loans in 2012 were issued for debt consolidation and credit card refinancing purposes, it is not surprising to see related phrases dominating the loan titles.

• Debt Consolidation
• Credit Card Payoff
• Consolidation Loan
• 2012 Consolidation / Consolidation 2012
• 2012 Personal Loan
• Bill Consolidation
• Card Consolidation

Loan Description

In 2012, 38% loans issued had no loan description. 50% loans issued had loan description with less than 90 characters. 90% of loans issued had loan description with less than 332 characters.

Length of Loan Description, Loan Volume, and Total Amount Funded

There was not much surprise with 53 character length of loan description, majority of them mentioned debt consolidation or similar variation and a few words. Similarly, 335 character length of loan description was primarily borrowers who wrote a complete sentence.

State of Residence

In 2012, borrowers from 45 different states took out loans on Lending Club platform. Only borrowers from state of Iowa (IA), Idaho (ID), Maine (ME), Mississippi (MS), Nebraska (NE), North Dakota (ND), and Tennessee (TN) were absent. Borrowers from Indiana (IN) joined in 2012. Iowa (IA) dropped off in 2011 and Mississippi (MS) dropped off in 2012.

The average amount per loan continue to rise for borrowers from all states with most increase from 2011 was for borrowers from state of New Mexico (NM), Vermont (VT), and Delaware (DE). The borrowers from Alaska (AK), Massachusetts (MA), and New Mexico (NM) borrowed the highest average amount per loan.

Borrower's State of Residence and Average Amount Funded

Borrower's State of Residence and Rise in Average Amount Funded

One change in 2012 from 2011 was that Texas bumped Florida to be in third place for the highest number of loans issued and total amount funded. California and New York continue to maintain first two spots. There were no significant changes in share of loans issued and amount funded to borrowers in each state in 2012 from 2011.

Borrower's State of Residence, Loan Volume, and Total Amount Funded

In future blog posts, I may take a short break from reviewing characteristics of Lending Club loans in 2012 to discuss a few developments at PeerCube.

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