Welcome to my Zopa freeformers blog

Hello and welcome to my blog. The topic for discussion is basically finance related blogging including information about Zopa.

What is Zopa?
Zopa is a UK based company providing an online money exchange, allowing people who have money to lend to provide it directly to people wanting to borrow it without the need to go through banks, a process sometimes referred to as peer to peer lending.
The name, Zopa, stands for Zone of Possible Agreement, a negotiating term identifying the bounds within which agreement can be reached between two parties. The idea for the service was identified following extensive socio-economic research which itself identified a group of individuals, coined Freeformers.
Freeformers were identified as displaying different attitudes towards many aspects of life, including their money, and Zopa has developed a credit referencing process that goes beyond credit bureau information in order to establish consumers' attitudes towards money, as well as their credit-worthiness. This extends their ability to offer credit to this freeformer group, who may have irregular incomes or short-term cash-flow requirements, but who may not be offered credit through traditional methods of credit referencing.
The service matches people that want to offer to lend money with people that need to borrow money. Matching is done on a many-to-one basis, such that no one lender is exposed to any single borrower. Bad debt risk is taken by the lender, and priced into the rate offered to borrowers, although debt recovery processes are available.
When someone applies to Zopa for a loan, the company's proprietary IT system carries out real-time authentication checks and accesses credit reporting data from Equifax and Call Credit. The customer is then put into one of four risk bands: A*, A, B or C.
Variously likened to ebay and betfair in the UK press, Zopa is an addition to the emerging group of peer-to-peer services enabled by the internet. Prosper is a similar service based in the U.S.
Launched in 2005, Zopa is led by a management team that comprises many of those that founded Egg in the UK.
The company is based in London and backed by BenchMark Capital and Wellington Partners.
The Social Futures Observatory recently published a study titled Internet Based Social Lending, which seeks to understand the antecedents of Social Lending, drawing parallels with Friendly Societies, and using Zopa as a major source of case study material.
Both borrowers and lenders are charged a 0.5% fee by Zopa on the funds for each transaction, although founder members are exempt from this charge.
Zopa launched in the U.S. in partnership with six credit unions on December 4, 2007.
As a result of the credit crunch of late 2007/early 2008, interest rates charged by Zopa lenders began to rise sharply, proving the system is responsive to prevailing lending and borrowing conditions.

Where do I fit in?
I am currently a lender with Zopa lending to all sort of individuals for all sorts of purposes including cars, motorbikes, holidays, weddings and debt consolidation. Zopa is a fantastic opportunity on several planes. Borrowers can get a fantastic rate compared to mainstream lenders and lenders can make a return on there investments through the interest rates they set when creating a lending offer.
Zopa is really exciting and can get people hooked on the whole idea of micro financing. In the short term that I have been lending, I have achieved around an 9.5% average lending rate on small amounts from £10 to £50 loaned out to individuals.
Additionally, I am one of 4 moderators on there own community boards. The boards are there to encourage any sort of discussion, not just Zopa. It is through these boards that a number of user experiences and improvements have been fed back to Zopa in order to aid their own capability maturity. Indeed, recent changes have made a world of difference and the whole platform is a lot sleeker than it was this point last year. Through steady developement, every lender and borrower has a part to play in helping Zopa be all it can be.
If you are interested in borrowing or lending, there is a nice little incentive, running at the moment. Simply click on the link (and follow the terms and conditions) and we can both be £30 better off:

http://uk.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/public/community/affiliates/index.html?referer=kirklean

Now the boring bit, the Terms and Conditions
Introduce a Friend Scheme – Terms & Conditions
Offer applies to all ‘Introduce a Friend' referrals who complete registration between 01.1.08 and 31.03.08 (“the Offer Period”). Only registered Zopa members are eligible to ‘Introduce a Friend'. Existing Zopa members who introduce a friend to Zopa will receive £30 when that friend either lends at least £500, or borrows any amount of money, at Zopa during the Offer Period. The introduced friend will also receive £30 only once he or she has lent at least £500, or borrowed any amount of money at Zopa during the Offer Period. If the same person is introduced by more than one Zopa member, the reward will be based on the recommendation which first results in registration. You can not introduce yourself or an existing Zopa member. In each eligible case, the £30 will be credited to the members' Zopa holding accounts within 28 days after the conditions have been met. If you have not yet completed the Zopa registration process you will need to complete this in order to receive your £30 reward. As part of this offer, you warrant and undertake that you have the consent of your friend(s) to disclose their personal details to Zopa for this purpose.
Friends who were referred and then registered before 31.12.07 through any previous referral offers will be rewarded based on the terms for that previous offer.
Zopa reserves the right to amend, withdraw or extend any or all elements of this promotion at any time, without prior notice. Promoter: Zopa Limited. Registered office: 3rd Floor, Radiant House, 36-38 Mortimer Street, London W1W 7RG. Company Registration No.: 05197592.