Zopa Glossary

 

Identity Checking

When people join Zopa, we need to be sure they are who they say they are. Because if they're not who they say they are, they're someone else.

So we ask people a series of questions to check their identity. They're asked things dating back up to 7 years that only they should know the answer to.

Sometimes we may not have enough information about people to ask them the necessary amount of questions to confirm their identity. This is often the case with people who haven't taken out credit before.

In review

If the status next to your loan is displayed as 'In review' this means your application is in the queue to be reviewed by our underwriters.

Lenders

Zopa lenders are people who care about what happens to their money. They're looking for a great return, of course, but they also want their money to help out other people rather than big institutions.

There are lots of different types of lenders - from pensioners to students to company directors to savvy investors - and everyone has a slightly different taste in clothes.

Lending offer

Before lenders can make their money available to Zopa borrowers, they have to make a lending offer. This involves deciding how much money they want to lend, at what rates and in which markets.

A lending offer can be set up by a lender either before or after they transfer money into Zopa.

If they already have money in their Zopa holding account, they simply need to decide what terms they want to lend at and in which markets, and then their money gets put on the Zopa marketplace. If they don't have money in their account, they can set up a lending offer in the same way, and then fund the offer at a later date.

Lenders can make multiple lending offers and they can change existing ones by tweaking the rates or the markets their money is being offered in.

Listings

Zopa listings work like and auction. A borrower creates a listing detailing how much they want to borrow, why lenders should lend to them and then lenders start making bids.

From a borrower's point of view they may end up with a more competitive rate than by going through the markets, or they may have complicated circumstances which they can explain on a listing but cannot convey on a markets application.

From a lender's point of view they get to review individual borrowers themselves and bid against other lenders to possibly achieve a better return than on the markets.

Loan term

The loan term is the length of time you choose to borrow or lend for. On the markets you can choose a term of 36 or 60 months and on the listings you can choose a term of 12, 24, 36, 48 or 60 months.

Remember, though, that at Zopa borrowers are able to repay early if they choose at no extra cost.