Just Setup My Lending Club Account - Why I Chose Lending Club Vs. Prosper

Recently I've decided to try out some different ways of making my money work for me as opposed to just buying individual stocks with my Scottrade account. I opened a WealthFront and Betterment account and just recently did a write-up on those which can be read HERE. I also however opened an account with Lending Club and am going to be giving that a try as well. The reason of this post is to tell you why I decided to try Lending Club as opposed to Prosper.

Lending Club Vs. Prosper

I just funded the account so havn't really had a chance to use it yet, however I was able to setup the auto-investing setting and also take a look around at the platform as a whole as well as the available notes, interest rates and ratings. I'll report back and do another post in a few weeks or months to comment on the ease of use of the platform as well as returns. In the end however after doing some research and reading some blogs I wound up deciding to use Lending Club instead of Prosper.

As far as the Pro's and Con's of each platform, both are well reviewed and well liked. In the end however there are a few reasons why I chose Lending Club over Prosper. First off most people seem to say Lending Club has a simpler and easier to use dashboard and website. Lending Club also has many more lenders and borrowers, I don't have the specific numbers in front of me but Lending Club has significantly more money being lent through the company.

One area however where Prosper beats out Lending Club according to many is it's possible to get higher interest rates through Prosper than lending club, I believe even on more well rated notes you get slightly higher interest but where this is a bigger deal is if you deal with the riskier grade notes.

As I said, in the end I wound up going with Lending Club. I can't say one is definitively better than the other but after reading many blogs and doing research I decided Lending Club was a better fit for me. Once I get the hang of how the system works I'll probably open up an account with Prosper as well and do a comparison of returns for you guys within the next few months.

Have you thought about taking the plunge and trying to make some money with peer to peer consumer lending? Why not give it a try?