Lending Club Reveals Q4 Figures, $146 Million Loss for the Year

The year that shook the industry ended six weeks ago but the total damage wrought is just now coming out. Lending Club lost $146 million in 2016, $32 million of which can be attributed to Q4. But it didn’t end all that badly according to CEO Scott Sanborn.

On the earnings call he said, “our attention was focused on rebalancing our funding mix, a key step to bolster our resiliency and enable a return to growth. We set a target to help our bank partners close out their rigorous diligence, so that they could return to scale. I’m pleased to say that our efforts have paid off as not only are all of our key bank investors back buying on the platform, but we’ve also welcomed multiple new bank partners over the last few months.”

And so they’re feeling quite optimistic. “It’s an exciting time for Lending Club and I look forward to beginning the next phase of our growth,” Sanborn concluded before turning the call over to new CFO Tom Casey.

Casey went on to predict that the company would lose another $69 million to $84 million in 2017, with nearly half of that expected to be generated in the first quarter of this year.

In brighter news, the company celebrated the 10th year anniversary of their first loan and surpassed more than $25 billion in loans since inception. With close to 2 million customers-to-date, that would mean that nearly 1% of the adult population in the US has had a Lending Club loan.

Less than 10% of their loan volume is comprised of education and patient finance loans, small business loans, and small business lines of credit, according to their report.