Zopa Marks Three Years of Social Lending With Launch in Japan

LONDON, March 7/PRNewswire/ --

Social lending pioneer Zopa (http://uk.zopa.com) is three years old today
which also marks the third birthday of peer-to-peer lending. Zopa was the
very first company to make personal loans available this way when it launched
on 7 March 2005 - and now there are more than 20 P2P lenders around the
globe.

Today Zopa also announces its imminent launch in Japan - its fourth
country after Italy (http://it.zopa.com) and the US (since it launched in 2005 in the UK.

The launch in Japan further strengthens Zopa's position as the leader in
its field. As well as being the world's first, it is also the first global
brand in social lending and will be the first peer-to-peer lender in Japan.

Since launch, Zopa has arranged more than GBP20m in unsecured personal
loans in the UK. More recently growth has been boosted by the global credit
crunch which is driving unprecedented demand for P2P loans as banks become
less competitive and tighten their lending criteria. All of this has also
pushed up returns to Zopa lenders to an all time high.

The growing appeal of social lending was highlighted further by the
recent report from Gartner that predicted peer-to-peer lending would
represent 10% of the personal loan market by 2010.

Giles Andrews, co-founder and Managing Director of Zopa said "With recent
average returns for lenders the best they have ever been at 8.1%, with some
enjoying more than 10%, social lending has never looked so attractive.
Borrowers continue to enjoy rates normally much lower than they can get from
the banks, and despite months of turmoil in the credit markets, our
state-of-the-art credit and affordability checks have maintained our
remarkably low default rate at less than 0.1%."

"We are delighted to be celebrating our third birthday with news of our
upcoming launch in Japan. We look forward to helping even more people around
the world enjoy the big benefits of cutting out the banks by borrowing and
lending with other people instead."

Since launch, Zopa has quickly grown in size to over 190,000 members in
the UK alone and has won many international awards along the way for its
innovation and technology - including a Webby (2007, Best Banking Website)
alongside the BBC and Guardian, two CNet Technology Awards (2006, Internet
Innovation of the Year and 2007 Technology Project of the Year) and even one
from the banking industry itself (2007, The Banker Technology Award - Best
Internet Project).

Zopa has attracted over GBP18 million of backing and proved to the
banking industry that social lending is relevant to people all around the
world. Indeed, recent research from Gartner said that by 2010,
"Social-banking platforms will have captured 10% of the available market for
retail lending and financial planning". The banking industry recognises this,
with Zopa recently being short-listed for 'Most Threatening Non-Bank
Competitor' in the 2008 Retail Banker International Awards and for Innovation
in the 2008 Efma Retail Finance Awards.

Source: Zopa

For further assistance please contact: Martin Campbell, BeaconStrategic, on +44-7802-634-695 or martin@beaconstrategic.com

2008-03-06 19:05:00 0306926 PRNEWSWIRE