Lending Club Named to Forbes' "America's Most Promising Companies" List for Second Consecutive Year

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Lending Club (http://www.lendingclub.com), the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, today announced it has been named to Forbes' America's Most Promising Companies list for the second year in a row. Lending Club ranks No. 12 this year, up from No. 20 the previous year, on this highly watched list of one hundred privately held, high-growth companies.

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"We are honored to be recognized again by Forbes as one of America's Most Promising Companies," said Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche. "We feel that our increased position on Forbes' list is a confirmation of the value we have delivered to both borrowers and investors, as well as an affirmation of the profound and positive impact we are having on the consumer finance industry."

Lending Club's inclusion on Forbes' list comes as another remarkable year has come to a close. In 2012, the company dramatically grew loan volume to over $1 billion, more than doubled revenue, achieved cash flow positive status in the third quarter and made three high-profile appointments to its board of directors: Morgan Stanley Chairman Emeritus John Mack, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers General Partner Mary Meeker, and Harvard University President Emeritus and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. 

Lending Club reduces the cost of traditional bank lending to offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns. The platform's growth has been largely fueled by borrowers looking for lower rates. More than 75 percent of borrowers on the platform report using their personal loans to pay off high-interest credit card balances or other debt. By focusing on high-credit-quality borrowers, Lending Club's platform has also generated 22 consecutive quarters of positive returns, based on platform performance as of January 7, 2013.

One metric never says it all. For the Most Promising list, Forbes strove for a holistic gauge of young, privately-held companies, trying to pin down their trajectories by looking at a slew of variables. Over the course of six months Forbes reviewed thousands of applications. The final assessment is based on growth (both in sales and hiring), quality of management team and investors, margins, market size and key partnerships. Forbes turned to CB Insights, a Manhattan-based data research firm that specializes in assessing private companies, to refine the search. Their MOSAIC software scans 45,000 sources to measure a company's health. A new distribution deal, for example, marks a positive signal, while the loss of an executive is a negative. MOSAIC gathers those myriad signals into a final score that Forbes uses as an initial guide in producing the list. After verifying sales numbers, speaking with each company and debating their merits and blemishes, Forbes produces a final ranking.

To view the complete the list, please visit http://www.forbes.com/promising-companies/.

About Lending Club

Lending Club utilizes technology and innovation to reduce the cost of traditional banking and offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns. Lending Club started operations in 2007 and has been recognized for its results and innovation by the Harvard Business Review and Dow Jones, was named one of Forbes' America's Most Promising Companies in 2011 and 2012, and recognized as a 2012 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. Lending Club is based in San Francisco, California. More information is available at: http://www.lendingclub.com. Currently only residents of the following states may invest in Lending Club notes: CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, KY (accredited investors), LA, ME, MN, MO, MS, MT, NH, NV, NY, RI, SC, SD, UT, VA, WA, WI, WV, or WY.

Additional information about Lending Club is available in the prospectus for Lending Club's notes, which can be obtained on Lending Club's website at https://www.lendingclub.com/info/prospectus.action.

All loans made by WebBank, a Utah-chartered Industrial Bank, Member FDIC.

CONTACT:
Martha Shaughnessy
[email protected]
415-593-1400

SOURCE Lending Club

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