Microlending.ca - Canadian P2P Lending News

Alrighty, so a couple of changes in the past 24 hours,

New CommunityLend Site

Communitylend has updated their site. Most of the information is the same, but I can say that the site in the current form represents what their production site will look like (or at least it does look like the demos that I was shown in the past). So, get to know the look and feel of the new site, because it is what you'll have to deal with in the future.

As well, Colin, whom has been blogging on the banking industry for quite a while at The Bank Watch, is handling the blog over at Communitylend, which you can take a look at at Blog.Communitylend.com (easy enough to remember, yes?). The blog (in the current form) seems to be more of a continuation of the Bank Watch, but with a focus on P2P Lending.

Board of Advisors Up: What Does That Mean?

The Board of Advisors is up. First, just a little background on all of these boards. The Board of Directors represents the shareholders, they have some official status under the various Acts that corporations operate under. So, in this case, it is made up of people that seem to be their angel investors (or their representatives), and the founders of the company (ie: people with equity shares). Of course, it isn't a democracy usually, the more share of the company that you own, the more vote you get on the board of directors (usually). Shareholders can pass resolutions and such that direct and guide the company.

The Board of Advisors doesn't really have an official capacity (usually), they're just there to give suggestions and such that don't have to be accepted. Since we can see that some members hail from far away places, it is possible that they don't all physically meet together (whereas the shareholders will have an Annual General Meeting which must be held in Ontario).

So, both of these boards provide some direction to the company on a long-term visionary basis, they wouldn't meet every day or every week (most likely).

The management team is the group that handles the day to day operations.

A Little Canadian P2P Lending History

There was also an article that I think Colin linked, but I can't for the life of myself find the original link from, but it seems to be a pretty good history of P2P Lending in Canada up until now. It includes news on Communitylend, IOU Central, and my favourite, the regulators, so to get up to speed, take a read here: BankRate.com Article on P2P Lending in Canada in 3 annoying pages! A "Printable" version was unavailable.