Harmoney.com is New Zealand’s first licensed peer to peer lending platform allowing people to borrow money and allowing other people with money to invest in it. They break every borrower’s loan into $25 ‘notes’ allowing the individual investors to select how many notes that they wish to invest in each loan application through the online marketplace.
Once I had been ID by the team in Fiji I was able to login to my investor account and click on the marketplace to see how many loans were available to invest in.
Once you’ve selected a lone you can click on the loan ID. You will get a pop-up box which will give you more information about the person and the reasons why they have applied for a lone. You will also get to see how much interest you will get as well as the likelihood in a percentage of the them defaulting on the loan. I think my favourite features is the ability to see which time of the day they applied and submitted they’re lone. Each loan application will remain live on the marketplace for 14 days and you can see how many more $25 notes are left before the loan is fully invested in. If you want to you can select auto investment which saves you the process of going through each line and selecting a loan to choose – however I’m no financial expert, but I prefer (and oddly enjoy) selecting them myself.
Only time will now tell whether peer-to-peer lending is a viable option in a little country like New Zealand and whether investing in unsecured loans through the network is a good idea or not.
Harmoney.com being the first has definitely made a good start and I wish them all the best. So far their website, platform and customer service centre are our friendly, efficient and easy to use.
This review is independent and I’m not a financial advisor. You should seek registered financial advice before making financial decisions.