FIRE Finance: $100 Lending Club Sign Up Bonus

Lending Club is offering a 2% cash bonus for new lenders or investors. That means that you can earn a $100 Lending Club Sign up Bonus with an investment of $5,000 or $50 for an investment of $2,500. You need to invest your funds within 45 days of signing up to earn this 2% cash bonus. Your bonus will be placed in your Lending Club account within 15 business days following the determination of your eligibility. The good news is that there is NO maintenance fees and it takes $0 to open an account.

For those of you who are new to Lending Club, it is one of the major players in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. The idea behind P2P is to directly connect borrowers with lenders. This does away with middle men aka banks. The result is that borrowers can avail lower loan rates while investors can earn higher returns.

Important Points for Lending Club Lenders / Investors

Minimum Investment for bonus: None! To be eligible for your Lending Club bonus, all funds must be newly transferred to your account within 45 days of your registration date, continuously maintained in your Lending Club account and fully invested on the Lending Club platform within 45 days of your registration date. You can fund your Lending Club account via ACH transfers from your bank acccount.

Interest Rates: Annual percentage rates for all loans range from 6.78% (A1) to 24.95% (G5). All loans made by WebBank, a Utah-chartered Industrial Bank.

Fees for Lenders: The service charge paid by lenders is one percent (1%) of all amounts paid by the borrowers to Lending Club. The 1% service charge impacts the investors' annual returns by less than 1% because it is not an annual charge.

Investment Limits: According to Lending Club's rules, there is no set limit, but you may not purchase notes in excess of 10% of your net worth (exclusive of the value of your home, home furnishings and automobile).

Sell Loans: As lenders, if you want to sell your loans, Lending Club offers a means to trade your notes on the Note Trading Platform using a FOLIOfn account with a 1% trading fee. This feature provides some liquidity to a lender's notes.

Other Limits: Transactions in the secondary market (the trading platform operated by FolioFN) do not count as "investing funds" or towards unlocking the bonus. Your Lending Club sign-up bonus payment is taxable so please consult with your personal tax advisor. You are responsible for any taxes related to this offer. Void where otherwise prohibited. This offer may not be combined with any other offer.

As usual, there are some risks involved in loaning money. The overall annualized default rate since Lending Club's inception in 2007 has been below 3%. Its stated returns to investors is measured after taking into account that default rate. Lending Club's default rate remains low because they are very diligent in both selection criteria and collection activities for a loan. Since inception, they have been approving less than 1 in 10 loan requests submitted to Lending Club. Loans with higher risks have higher rate of returns and vice versa.

However, in the best case, you can earn good interest rates which are far higher than traditional investment vehicles like a certificate of deposit (CD). Also in the process, you'll learn working details of P2P and various ways of creating a risk tolerant and diversified portfolio of loans. Lending Club also offers an exit strategy by providing means to liquidate your loans by selling them. Seems like an interesting game :). This offer may be discontinued at any time without notice so GET your 2% Bonus ($100 Bonus for an investment of $5,000) while it lasts!