A simple enough question, but even the lady running Lloyd’s retail banking in the UK couldn’t tell the Treasury Select Committee how much she was being charged for her own Lloyds current account. It made uncomfortable yet compelling viewing, as a quick look at this footage will confirm (fast forward to 9:56:25) http://bit.ly/eOWxZp.

The Treasury Select Committee’s view is that unless you can tell what you are paying for your banking, how can there be any real price competition between banks? It’s a very good point.

Competition in the banking sector was one of the key issues that the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB), chaired by Lord Vickers, was asked to look at by the Government. Its final report was published earlier this week, but almost all of the noise afterwards was about whether or not banks in Britain should have their everyday retail operations “ring-fenced” from their so-called ‘casino’ banking where all the big and dangerous risks are taken. Vickers says yes, most banks say no.

The Government has come out in favour of Vickers’ recommendations and said it will pass new laws to put them into action, BUT after further consultation – and not before 2019. Not exactly next week, and with years for the banks’ lobbyists to try to dampen Mr Osborne’s apparent enthusiasm for change.

Zopa made its own contribution to these debates recently by commissioning the independent research company Ipsos MORI to find out how well the public understands or even just knows about ‘Bank Spreads’- the difference between what banks pay in interest on your savings, versus what they charge you to borrow. The typical bank currently inflicts a spread of 11%, paying around 1% on savings, but charging around 12% for a personal loan (source: Moneyfacts)

Here are Ipsos MORI’s findings:

1. 93% of consumers do not know what a Bank Spread is.
2. Of those that say they do know, less than half actually do.
3. When told that a typical Bank Spread is currently 11% (source: Moneyfacts, between savings account interest rates and rates charged for personal loans), a total of 58% of people think that is too high (38% think it is far too high).
4. 41% of people disagreed with the statement “Banks are commercial organisations which need to make money so I am comfortable with them doing so in this way”.
5. 80% of people agree that “Banks should state clearly what their current spread between their typical personal loan and typical savings rate is, for example in branches and online”.
6. 73% of people think “the Government and regulators should put rules in place that control the size of spread that a bank is allowed to apply.”

Giles Andrews (cofounder and CEO of Zopa) said “The difference in rates obtained by lenders and borrowers is, clearly, fundamental to the banking industry because that is where their profit lies. But this research reflects public concern that the traditional lending institutions are ripping their customers off and keeping their customers in the dark about the process and the extent of the rip off.”

“It does not have to be this way. We at Zopa have shown that peer to peer lending, conducted in a transparent manner, works better for everyone. Borrowers can get access to much lower rates, individual lenders can secure returns greatly in excess of savings accounts and Zopa can take its low charges, all within the spread, leaving everyone much better off than if they had gone to a bank. It is just rather tragic that more people don’t even know about bank spreads and the measure they provide of just how much the banks are taking from them and their fellow customers.”

I couldn’t agree more. What do you think?

But we don’t want to do it on our own!  We’d love for you to join us and to help get you started here’s our consumption calculator to work out how much you could save and donate: NEEDLESS Calculator

Remember, we’re classing consumption as food, drink and entertainment, so you can ignore all your bills and travel costs.  You might have to limit those trips to the pub and make a packed lunch for a week, but by the end of the week we’re pretty sure you’ll be a far more savvy spender so you really can’t lose!

So who’s in?!  Watch this space and our Facebook page for updates and a challenge for the weekend!

This blog post explains the changes we have made to the screens and above all, the data they present to our Lenders.

Zopa icon
The data that informs the Zopa icon has been changed slightly to be more representative of what’s actually going on in the markets. While previously, the Zopa looked at the last 5 matched applications and defined the lower and upper boundaries as the lowest and highest rates included in these loans (which meant the Zopa could fluctuate quite rapidly), the new Zopa boundaries are defined by the extremes of the last 7 days.

The upper boundary comes into force when the rate you’ve selected was not included in any of the loans approved in the market during the last week, while the lower boundary is defined by the rate that would’ve gotten you included in absolutely every loan approved in the past week in the respective market.

More information section
One of the key improvements in the new screen is the quality of data we provide that further informs how you set rates – in addition to the Zopa icon. Instead of the ‘Max rate’, ‘Min rate’, ‘Lending Speed’ and ‘Offered Lower’ columns, you can now see a ‘Lending Forecast’, ‘% Loans’ and ‘Minimum loan size’, based on the data of the last 7 days.

These columns are intended to show more experienced (or interested newbie!) Lenders what they could have lent and how many % of loans they would have been included in the past 7 days and at what loan size their money would currently be matched at using the selected rate. While we can’t issue 100% accurate predictions, the performance in the previous week should be a good indicator of the possible performance in the future.

Market data
You may have heard of our weekly market data spreadsheet in the weekly Lender email, you may have even downloaded it before. If you have, you might also know that it’s updated once a week on a Monday, and therefore not very useful on a Friday afternoon when you want to find out where you are in the Queue. On the upside, it’s in a spreadsheet format, so you can easily find yourself and do calculations that help inform your rate choices – if you want to get really stuck in.

At the same time, the previous lending screen had a little ‘Mkt’ link, which opened a window showing you the real-time Queue to a high degree of detail, but unfortunately not in a format that’s very easy to play with.

For the new screen, we’ve decided to take the best of both worlds and provide a downloadable spreadsheet providing up-to-date information on the current Queue of Offers in all markets. Additionally, we’ve anonymised the information (except for your username) for security reasons.

All that aside, we believe the new screens are a lot cleaner and easier to navigate, and should make it less daunting for new Lenders and more insightful for experienced Lenders to play with their Lending Offer.

As you may know, although individual borrowers are protected by Consumer Credit laws overseen by the OFT, there are currently no bespoke regulations in place to protect lenders and Zopa has been actively lobbying Government to put appropriate regulation in place. We have received supportive responses, but have been told that new regulation must wait for the new regulator replacing the FSA to be put in place. This is still some months or even years off.

It is with this in mind that we as key industry players decided to establish an official trade body to set meaningful standards that all members must adhere to. This body will help ensure that when regulations do eventually get put in place by the Government, they are sensible and appropriate for our innovative sector. Other peer-to-peer finance firms are free to apply for membership, but to join they must meet all of the Association’s Rules and Operating Principles as Zopa, RateSetter and Funding Circle all do.

Full details about the P2P Finance Association and its Rules and Operating Principles can be found at its website: www.p2pfinanceassociation.org.uk

After a scrumptious dinner (of which photographic evidence is not available, due to bad lighting and rumbling, impatient stomachs), the happy news was announced to the tunes of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds: Zopa is the UK’s Most Trusted Personal Loans Provider 2011, for the second year running!

(Phone cameras aren’t what they used to be…)

Last year, we were thrilled to take the crown and we are over the moon that we have once again been voted to the top spot by our lovely borrowers – thank you to everyone who gave us their vote, we look forward to another year of great service!

And just to put this into context: Over 12,000 British consumers participated in the survey and had their say on how their financial service providers performed – what a sample size!

For the full results, check Moneywise here:
http://www.moneywise.co.uk/customer-service-awards/results
For more pictures from the event, check our facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/ZopaUK

Not only is this a great opportunity to join Zopa on a full-time basis and shape both the future of Zopa and your own experience, we also have a great selection of fresh biscuits every week, a bunch of fun and enthusiastic colleagues and a splendid location in the very centre of London!

We look forward to hearing from you!

From the Zopa team, Giles, Adam, Amanda, Marie and Beth will be representing, and if we don’t see at least 5 members join us to balance the numbers we will be very distraught!

Joining the chat is straighforward, but to be sure I’ll outline the process briefly here:
1) Go to Zopa Talk at 2pm on Friday (or any other time before 3pm).

2) Log in using either your Forum login (this is not your Zopa username and you’ll have to register separately), your Facebook login or your Twitter login.

3) Look for the tab that says ‘Chat’ (you won’t be able to see it right now as we haven’t set it live yet, but here’s a screenshot so you know what to expect):

Depending on your feedback, we hope to introduce this as a more regular feature but for now: see you on Friday!

PS: Apologies to all the Friggatriskaidekaphobics amongst you, we hope you might pop in anyway (a little known fact, the fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia).

You won’t address the banks’ poor delivery and virtual monopoly of the lending and savings markets by creating more banks – whether you break them up or not – or fiddling at the edges with the rules. That just means we have more banks. When horse drawn carriages could not meet man’s transportation needs, we didn’t just breed more horses, we invented the motor car.

We don’t just need more of the of the same, dressed up in a different way. It’s time for the Government to stop thinking that banks are the only way to provide the essential financial tools required by the public and the economy. Through their corporate greed and lack of foresight, many banks became insolvent and had to be bailed out, despite their virtual monopoly and offering very poor products and services to the consumer.

Since the crisis, and despite the handouts, banks continue to systematically fleece the consumer, by inflicting some of the biggest spreads ever seen in an attempt to rebuild the balance sheets that they destroyed. It’s not impressive, and frankly the prospect of trying to address such poor performance by creating more banks is misguided.

Access to good value, competitive savings and borrowing products is essential for people to lead their lives successfully and for the economy to operate effectively. Allowing the same industry that brought the country to its economic knees to continue to have a monopoly on delivery of these vital social functions just makes no sense at all.

Obviously there are bits of the banking system, away from the casino banking of their investment arm, which are socially useful and ways to make these better must be found. The peer-to-peer mechanism, where the lenders and the borrowers decide the rate at which they do business, is such a way. The peer-to-peer mechanism keeps more money in borrowers’ pockets and gives lenders a better return at the same time – precisely because there is no bank involved in the transaction.

Over the last 6 years Zopa has proven that new competitors outside of the cosy cartel of banking can not only deliver ready access to superior value to the consumer, they can do a radically better job of supposedly core banking functions like managing credit. Peer-to-peer lending is a mechanism which helps enlightened lending companies give better value to consumers.

The Government should take decisive action to help new competitors with new models to apply real pressure on the banks to drastically raise their game, not just make it easier for more banks to join this cosy club where the consumer barely gets a look in.

Sadly, in the heat of the night, no pictures were taken. While some may say that is a good thing, if you do have some party snaps, we’d be very happy to see them over on our Facebook page!

At this point we would like to extend a big thank you to all our members who joined us – it was a pleasure meeting you all, and we hope to see you again next year! And for all those who couldn’t make it (and all those who could, in fact), here is a heart-warming story about one member whose reason-for-absence put a smile on our faces…

On the 4th March, we received this message:
“Thank you very much for the invite to your wonderful 6th birthday bash – unfortunately I shan’t be able to attend as this date shall not only mark your 6th birthday but also the date on which we are expectant our first born child.
As much as I am sure having a child born at your birthday bash would be superb for publicity I have a feeling my partner may not be so accepting of the idea however I shall mention it in passing!”

And guess what was in our inbox the morning after the birthday party?
“Just thought I should drop you a response to let you know that our gorgeous little girl was born yesterday evening – so best that we decided against coming to your 6th Birthday party.”

How lovely is that?! Congratulations from the Zopa team!

When we filmed the ad, we simply asked a few of our borrowers to describe Zopa, explain why it’s different and why they like it in their own words. The regulator has a tricky job making sure that a particular turn of phrase in an advert can’t be interpreted as denigratory and that all claims are substantiated and even though we picked the snippets that were most factual, we were still not able to get the thumbs up. For example, they didn’t like “loan company like no other” as they felt there are now other P2P lenders and wouldn’t accept our argument that they have different lending models. They also thought that some denigration of the banks accumulated through the ad to the point where it became overly critical, even if only by implication, so for now we’re running with our trusty first cut and are watching the impact it’s having very closely to see if we can prove that a second bite at the cherry will be worthwhile.
Stay tuned…

Garrett has been a member of Zopa for a few years, His Twitter Bio says: Passionate about people, Dublin lad living in Glasgow play rugby for Clydebank and have my own business.

Why Zopa is so cool

When I moved to the UK I could not wait to start loaning money with Zopa, Coming from Ireland we did not have access to a system that allows you to take control of your finances in this way

If I have a good work day and win a new contract I can make a deposit and see this money grow and help others.

I love the youth loans section, I had people around when I was young to give me a hand and I can give back now by offering my best rates to the youth market.

I love the email I get every week, gives me a little boost to know my money is helping people and I can see it earn me a return.

I started my own business to offer outsourced sales to allow companies use my services to boost their sales when they need it, I feel Zopa allows me the same flexibility to do what I want to do with my money.

Just started on twitter @garramsay and spreading the Zopa word as fast as I can

Thank you, Garrett!

If you would like to be the next guest blogger, pop us an email: adam@zopa.com

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll have seen our entry from June 2010 on winning not just one, but two Moneywise Customer Service Awards. That was all thanks to our lovely borrowers who took some time to fill out the Moneywise survey and told the world how much they liked their experience with us as their Personal Loan provider.

This year, Moneywise are once again looking for the nation’s most trusted finance providers in a range of product categories, giving you a chance to (I quote) “reward the companies you love, shame the ones you don’t.”  The product categories you can vote on include mortgages, credit cards, home insurance, savings accounts and personal loans.

This last category is probably the first where Zopa springs to mind, and if you’ve taken out a loan with us, we’d feel honoured if you chose to mention us in the survey.

Additionally, if you are not a borrower, but a lender who’s invested savings using Zopa and enjoyed the service we offer, we’d be delighted if you shared your thoughts on your Zopa lending account as a sort of savings account.

It only takes 10 minutes to complete the survey (according to Moneywise, longer if you get carried away…) and to offer an incentive aside from getting your voice heard, Moneywise is giving away 1 x £1,000 in cash and 5 x £50 in retail vouchers among all participants – so best of luck to those of you who vote!

For reference, here’s the link in its full splendour: http://www.moneywise.co.uk/customerserviceawards/2011

—

There was much wearing of silly hats and those odd shoes that no one likes at our recent Christmas shindig when we all went for a spot of bowling. We established that the drinking of wine has a distinctly variable effect on bowling skills, causing Beth to improve markedly while making others go distinctly downhill.

You can check out a few snaps from the evening here and more importantly, enter our caption competition for this photo. Just tell us what Giles might have said to cause that reaction from Adam and Christian and the best entry wins something nice! Get your entry in before 4th Jan 2011.

Back in October 2006 we were officially “bigger than Basildon” when we hit 100,000 members.

Two years later in July 2008 we became “bigger than Brighton” when our 200,000th member signed up.

Another two years later in May 2010 we hit a whopping 400,000 members making us bigger than Bristol, as well as Brunei, The Bahamas, Belize and Barbados.

Just over 6 months on and we’re now larger than Liverpool, Leeds and Luxembourg and more sizeable than Sheffield as we welcomed our half-a-millionth member!

We’ve had a bit of fun over on the forum where members nominated the date and time they thought our 500,000th member would sign up. It happened on 1st December at 3.26pm so congratulations go to sl75 who was just a couple of hours out with his nomination and wins some wine for his efforts!

Next stop, greater than Glasgow…

Last week was an exciting week for everyone at Zopa as well as for our lenders, when we announced the launch of a new feature called ‘Rapid Return’.  It’ll allow lenders in most circumstances to access some or all of their money, before their borrowers are due to pay it all back, in return for a 1% charge.

Until now, lenders had no option to access their money lent out until it is repaid by borrowers through their monthly repayments. But with the launch of ‘Rapid Return’, lenders can now choose to get instant access to their money, for whatever reason they want.

This new option means that for huge numbers of people who by necessity have their money in instant access savings accounts, the radically better returns available from person-to-person lending become readily available. Given that the average return on an instant access savings account is currently 0.79% (source: Moneyfacts) and the average return Zopa lenders have enjoyed over the last 12 months is 8.1% (after charges but before any bad debt), this could make an enormous difference to the financial well-being of these people.

We’re pleased to see that it’s proving rather popular! Click here to find out more about how it works.

So if you fancy joining the growing club of modern gentlemen who believe in the virtues of fine moustachery, immaculate grooming and growing a moustache for Movember, we’re looking for ladies and gents to join Team Zopa to change the face of men’s health. The more people we get on board, the more lives we can impact, so join us now and either grow a moustache as a Mo Bro, or join as a Mo Sista to help us on our journey.

All the ladies in the office are armed with stick-on ‘taches to better empathise with us fellas along the way. If growing a mo isn’t your thing either, why not help us with a donation instead or send us your amusing faux-moustached photos?

We’ll of course keep you up-to-date with our progress here on the blog and over on our Facebook page throughout Movember.

Whenever I get the chance to speak at an event about peer-to-peer investing and personal loans, I consistently get the following questions: “isn’t the concept the same as Kiva?”, “are you not the same as Grameen Bank, but in the US?”,”it sounds like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, no?”.

The answer to all three questions is “No”. Even though peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding and microfinance share the same core concept, they are very different in their purposes and implementation. Here is an attempt to untangle your brains:

Crowdsourcing refers to the idea that a group of people can accomplish something that would otherwise be impossible for an individual to do alone. It involves turning to the general public or group of experts to address a need for ideas or work. The concept is based on the philosophy that the “collective” is wiser than any one person.

Arguably, the most successful web-based example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia, which has become a legend, taking on traditional encyclopedias (both physical books and e-versions) by enlisting collaborative content sourcing and reviewing. Another pioneer in this space is 99Designs, which enables crowdsourcing of visual design work online. Matt Mickiewicz, co-founder of 99Designs, explains that his company “is all about providing opportunities to designers to build their portfolios, find work, build client relationships, hone their skills, and have fun. On the other hand, we bring affordable, high-quality graphic design to start-ups and small businesses who in the past simply couldn’t afford it.”

Crowdsourcing is also to outsource work to the masses, independent of location. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is one of the better known brands in this area, but two more recent web-based crowdsourcing marketplaces are making the concept more popular nowadays: oDesk and CrowdFlower.

My favorite application of the crowdsourcing concept is the process of collecting ideas from users to improve a product or service. Check out UserVoice and Get Satisfaction for ways to create more intimate and effective product feedback loops with your customers.

Crowdfunding describes how the collective pools together money to support an initiative or project. Crowdfunding has historically been used for political campaigns, disaster relief (charitable donations), government support (taxes anyone?), and public projects. Anti Hannula, entrepreneur from Finland, argues that the pedestal where the Statue of the Liberty is placed today was crowfunded.

More recently, crowdfunding has seen a resurgence on the Internet on sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, where artists, entrepreneurs, and communities seek support for their ideas and projects from the “4F Bank”: fans, friends, family and fools. The individual seeking monetary support typically offers something in return for a donation, such as an autographed CD, discount on a art piece, or free access to a service.

Microfinance consists in providing of financial help to low-income families or individuals who traditionally lack access to banking and loans (a.k.a. the “unbanked”). The concept was pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient from Bangladesh, who devised a model to extend loans to entrepreneurs who were too poor or lacked the sufficient credit history to qualify for traditional bank loans. He put his model to work by creating Grameen Bank: banking for the poor.

Kiva is probably the most known of a myriad of web-based microfinance institutions and facilitators. Premal Shah, president of Kiva, describes microfinance as ” the way to empower others to lift themselves out of poverty.”

Peer-to-peer Lending or Investing is defined by wikipedia as for-profit financial transactions occurring directly between individuals or “peers” without the intermediation of a traditional financial institution. When you look at it carefully, you will realize that this is how lending was done centuries ago, before banks emerged and became the norm: communities borrowed and invested directly in its members. The Internet has now made this concept available to virtually anyone, offering an opportunity for borrowers to get better rates, and investors to earn better returns.

Zopa was the first peer-to-peer lending network, opening its Internet doors 5 years ago in the UK, and growing very rapidly in the last couple of years. Giles Andrews, CEO of Zopa, describes his company as “a marketplace where people can lend and borrow money to and from each other, sidestepping banks”.

Lending Club is the US-based leader in the space, having issued more than $170M in personal loans since its inception in 2007, and growing at a record-breaking pace. Last month, Lending Club announced that it had payed out more than $12M in interest to its investors.

So there you have it. Peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding and microfinance are like triplet sisters: even though they look alike from the distance, they are quite different in purpose and in how they work.

We were already big fans of the stuff; it’s basically PlayDoh for adults which sets when exposed to the air, allowing you to repair, improve, fix and make stuff. So now we’ve got a few sachets to give away, we thought we’d run an impromptu competition. Tell us what you’d use Sugru for by 20th October and the most impressive/amusing/imaginative suggestions will win some to put their ideas in to practice. Hooray!

We’re really rather pleased to have been given a big mention in a new book that’s just been launched, entitled “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”. Written by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, they’ve spotted that there’s something of a shift going on from hyper-consumption during the 20th Century to collaborative consumption in the 21st Century. But what is it? Well, it’s an explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting and swapping facilitated by technology – so of course Zopa is a prime example of it and by participating in it you now have proof that you’re VERY cutting edge!

There’s some nifty videos on it all here and if you fancy having a read, you can buy the book from Amazon.

So once again, we say a big thank you to all our members for making it all possible.

Now in the spirit of my love for data and pretty things, below is a visualisation of what £100million can do!

It was an enjoyable night, and while sipping at our lemonades I popped out my camera to take some pictures of our merry crew for our Facebook Page, and one photo in particular deserved a post of its very own. In fact we thought it deserved a competition of its own since it has been a week since our last competition, the Marmite Giveaway!.

So on that note, we bring you our Caption Competition.

We have a lovely photo below of Briony and Myself, both pulling a questionable expression, now all you have to do is give it a caption, or try and guess what we were talking about for us to have this expression on our faces.

To enter, all you need to do is leave us a comment with your caption, we’ll then pick our favourite out of the responses and the winner will win a pack of 90 Zopa stickers, and something extra, which is a surprise!

Since the weekend, and bank holiday is approaching we are going to let this run until Tuesday 31st August, this should give you all plenty of time to get your captions in!

Here’s the photo…

Happy captioning!

Update:

And the winner is….

Richard Quadling! With his entry:

“Briony practises her latest Vulcan mind control techniques. Adam is unmoved by the attempt.”

You prize is on its way over to you! – We won’t say what the surprise prize is just yet, we’ll wait till you receive it.

Many of you may have had a conversation or three with her over the phone, or via email while she’s in customer services.

Everyone here at Zopa would like to wish Jenny all the best for the future.

Just as I write this post, Ed besides me is blowing his nose, I like to think that this is due to him holding back the tears of Jenny’s departure, and not due to a runny nose…

How about a lovely picture in memory of Jenny…

Zopa is holding its very own marvellous Marmite giveaway tomorrow!

Starting from 10am we will be announcing one question, every hour until 5pm.

The questions will be posted both here, and on our Twitter @Zopa

To enter, all you need to do is submit your answer via a comment below or via an @ or DM message on Twitter. Once the next question is submitted we won’t accept entries for the previous question – A winner for each question will be selected at random by our unique winner selecting machine, conveniently named “Jenny’s Hat”.

“What do I win?” I hear you yell. Well, my curious little nipper, you must have heard about the day we had Marmite chocolate? Each lucky winner will win their very own bar of the chocolately Marmite goodness, and some Zopa stickers!

Good luck!

Question One:
What happened in the year 1066?
A: We were after the Battle of Hastings, although lots of things did indeed happen!

Winner: @jambag

Question Two:
Which staff member is pictured with Giles in our Facebook Album ‘Money Wise awards’?
A: It was indeed the ‘lovely’ Briony

Winner: @smokingadjoint

Question Three:
What colour does #bada55 produce?
A:

A lovely lime green

Winner: @dave_p_marshall

Question Four:
According to our website, how many staff currently work at Zopa HQ?
A: 26 – although the meet the team page only has 25 – we’ll accept either!

Winner: @charlotte_hs

Question Five:
Who was the first woman to climb Mount Everest?
A: It was indeed Junko Tabei

Winner: @RQuadling

Question Six:
What disaster did Zopa face in July?
A: The toilet seat disaster, of course!

Winner:sl75

Question Seven:
What special flavour of marmite was released for Valentine’s Day 2008?
A: Champagne flavour

Winner: @babelmonk

Question Eight:
Send us your most random fact, the best one will go in the newsletter and win some marmite chocolate…

Winner: @alsutton
With his answer: Cows will only walk up stairs and not down them and so can get trapped in your bedroom

If you didn’t get a change to win, you can always pick yourself up some Free MOO cards as a little prize instead! – Head on over to the post to see the details.

We have a number of ways that you can share Zopa online from Social Sharing Tools (those Twitter and Facebook icons you’ve seen about the site) to banners that you can display on your website or profile, and we even wrote an article on how to create your own Facebook Campaign. But we’ve realised that all these things are out there in the ether, we have nothing physical or tangible to offer your friends and family.

So to bring back physical sharing we’ve teamed up with our good friends over at MOO.com who have put on a special offer for us and you! They are offering all Zopa members 50 free MOO cards, all you need to pay is the postage and packaging at £3.

To get yours, head over to MOO using this special link and start creating your business cards. The great thing with MOO cards is that one side of each card can have it’s own image, so you don’t need to have the old generic ‘business cards’ where every one is the same. The only bit that will be the same is the back which will contain the text and most importantly your personal referrer code. When you come to adding the text, feel free to be creative. Write what ever you feel best describes Zopa that will help encourage people to sign up. But don’t forget to add your unique referrer link to earn your rewards which can be found over here.

Once you’ve completed your order, it’ll only be a matter of time before you can start handing out your new physical sharing tools to anyone and everyone, your brother, postman, and the nice couple at number 22!

If you’re stuck for images to use, we’ve added some below made just for the MOO cards so all you need to do is save them (Right click, Save Link As – Or Click the image to open it, then save) then upload them into MOO when you’re putting the cards together.

As they are free, we have had to limit to only one pack per household and each card comes with a small watermark on the front bottom saying “Make money by lending with Zopa | Cards by MOO.com”.

Enjoy!

In July our nice friends at Gu sent our weight in chocolately treats, which we all very much enjoyed.

Then on Friday we had a nice surprise from @loudmouthman who brought us a rather odd surprise in the form of Marmite Chocolate (Yes, you heard right. Marmite Chocolate!) which was made just for him by @mrsimmshorsham.

However odd it may sound, it was in fact rather yummy! (Though Steve may say the opposite!)

Nic recorded a video of his day out in London with the chocolate which you can see our reactions at the end.

So, Marmite, love it or hate it?

We do love to try new things here at Zopa, so if you have something you want some honest feedback with (or just fancy sending us a yummy present) please pop us an email or give us a call.

I have also written before about how Zopa welcomes competition as we think it should help to “normalise” the activity and therefore increase the size of the market overall, but to do so it needs to engender the same feelings of trust in its users that we have tried so hard to create, which brings me back to the subject of regulation.

If I cast my mind back to the end of 2004/early 2005, when we were working towards Zopa’s launch, we saw meeting the needs of regulation as the principal potential barrier, not the development of the technology. It was all uncharted territory so we invested heavily in time and money in understanding the positions of the FSA and the OFT and in getting to grips with the various relevant aspects of contract law to define the relationships between parties and in being able to create workable terms and conditions for our users. We planned to sell insurance, an FSA regulated activity, so had to apply for authorisation. This was at times a painful process as we had to detail the whole of our proposed business and not just the narrow insurance activity, but one which certainly added discipline to our approach generally. Unfortunately we had to give up our FSA regulation when we stopped that activity a few years later and when the scale of our main lending marketplace activity was not significant enough to attract the attention of the regulator. I say unfortunately because we have always considered the building of trust to be absolutely critical for our long term success and regulatory oversight should clearly be a help in this regard.

But now the scale of our business is significant. We will shortly have lent £100m of consumers’ money to other consumers. Imagine the (perfectly reasonable) outcry if that were to go wrong! Now that we have shown how to plot a path through UK regulation in such a way that, given we don’t sell insurance any more, there is effectively no oversight over how we operate and we have shown that there is strong market demand for the service, it is no surprise that we see the entrance of competitors. What is potentially troubling is that they won’t have had to invest in understanding or meeting the needs of the regulator. On the one hand I shouldn’t care; if they don’t operate the business responsibly or correctly they won’t generate trust and will fail, but on the other hand, and much more importantly, they could damage consumer trust in this new activity as a whole.

So what do I propose? I think the activity of person-to-person lending should be formally regulated (by whoever is the regulator at the time). Not as a bank, and not in the overarching manner that the SEC has applied in the US, but in a way that protects consumers while allowing them the benefit of accessing innovation. And this is something I’m working hard at!

As our Facebook followers will know, the month started off with our toilet seat disaster. It wasn’t long before our nice friends at Gu sent us lots of chocolatey goodness though, and so all concerns about our toilet needs were quickly forgotten.

When we weren’t taking pics in the bathroom or eating our bodyweight in chocolate, we were busy getting some user feedback on our website. There were lots of helpful suggestions in there, so keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming changes! We also turned our hands to a bit of film making, and even borrowed a rather swanky video camera for the occasion. Check out our Stephen Spielberg moment on the borrowing screens soon…

We’ll also be saying goodbye to a few members of our team this month. Andrew, Alan and Vashi will be heading to pastures new, so we wish them the best of luck and hope they’ll pop in to say hello from time to time. This means we’ll shortly be welcoming some new faces to the team, so make sure you read your newsletter for our new additions!

Here’s a snap I took of the proud Giles and Briony clutching their awards:

We also had some lovely company at our table in the form of the ladies from The Yorkshire Building Society and Nationwide and we thank them for not yawning whilst we rabbited on about how Zopa works and all that.

If you’re a current member you can access these images from within your ‘Tell A Friend’ page (bottom of the left-hand menu when you’ve logged in), on section 3 of ‘ways to do it’. There are currently two images, one for targeting borrowers and one for lenders and they each, of course, include your personalised link to refer new members to us. Everyone who clicks your link and and then lends at least £2000 or borrows any amount at Zopa earns you £50!

If creating an Facebook campaign is something that you’ve thought about, but never been sure how to go about it, here’s my simple guide to setting one up:

Make your own Zopa Facebook campaign
1. To start, head on over to Facebook Advertising.

2. Once you’re there, click on ‘Create an Advert’ as shown below.

3. Next, design your advert.

- Destination URL: This would be your personalised member link, which you can find on the ‘Tell A Friend’ Page. The URL would look something like this: http://uk.zopa.com/member/YOURUSERNAME.

- Title: Enter the title you want to display on the advert.

- Body Text: Enter the main text that you would like to display with the advert. Try to keep it within 135 characters.

- Image: You will need to save the images to your local computer, and then upload them to Facebook by clicking the Browse button.

4. To save the images, pick which one of the below you would like, a borrowing or lending image, then Right Click, and Save As.

5. Once you have done that, click Continue at the bottom of the page.

Next, targeting.

6. This is where you set up who you would like the advert to be targeted to. On the right hand side is a handy box that tells you how many Facebook users it estimates that the advert would reach.

- Location: Enter what country you would like the advert to be displayed in, you can also narrow it down to a city.

- Demographics: Select what age group, gender and other criteria you would like the advert to be displayed to.

- Likes & Interests: You can also narrow down to users who have interests in certain things!

- Education & Work: Select if you would like to target ‘All’ or narrow it down to a specific education or work place.

Next, Campaigns and pricing

7. Here you can set a limit to your spend per day on your Campaign (minimum of £1.00), set up specific dates to run the campaign, and pick if you want to pay for impressions (CPM) (an impression is when a web page is displayed to any user and the ‘M’ means you pay per 1000 impressions) or pay for clicks (CPC)

- CPM vs. CPC: If you choose pay for impressions (CPM), you will pay a share of your budget every time your advert is shown. If you choose pay for clicks (CPC), you will pay a share of your budget every time your advert is clicked.

I would recommend choosing CPC as your goal is for users to take action and click through to your Zopa webpage.

Review Advert

8. Make sure you check the accuracy of your advert here, as it and payment for it will go live in the big world of Facebook straight away.

9. Once you’re happy, click Place Order, if not click Edit Advert.

10. Next a pop up will appear asking you to add a funding source. Pick either Credit/Debt card or Paypal. Fill in the relevant payment details and submit them. Once you have completed that it will give you a successful message to confirm the transaction.

Your Facebook Campaign is now complete. Dead simple!

And remember, everyone who visits your Zopa webpage and then lends at least £2000 or borrows at Zopa earns £50 for you.

We look forward to seeing their site and wish them the best of luck.