April 17th, 2009
Lending Karma Review
Lending Karma is another social lending website that specializes in helping you document and track your loan. Very similar to a site we’ve just reviewed, Virgin Money, Lending Karma will assist in producing loan documents between two parties. All loan documents are produced in a PDF format.
Look and Feel
The website is very purple. From the logo, background gradient, text, and title bars, everything is purple. I think it’s a carryover from the early internet days when all visited links turned purple, but I’m just not a huge fan of using purple, particularly when its text. The site is simple and clean, which is the standard these days, but the overall look and feel didn’t really impress me.
Products and Pricing
Sign up was simple, just had to enter my email and some basic information to get an account. I went through the process of creating my own loan, all of it was straightforward. You select a loan amount, designate if you are a borrower or lender, and set various options such as interest rate, payment frequency and length of loan. Lending Karma calculates your payments for you, and then will prepare the loan package. Once your loan is finalized, you can submit payment and receive the documents.
Lending Karma has three different levels to their loan documenting service, starting at $29.99 and working up to $59.99 for the premium package. You can add their Tracker Plus onto the base product for online payment and end of year reporting. In today’s digital world, it’s a nice feature to allow your users to pay online. The premium package includes the base level Document Plus, and the Tracker Plus. Also, these are special introductory prices so take advantage while the prices are still low.
Overall Impressions
While Lending Karma offers slightly lower pricing than Virgin Money, they seem to be a little behind the curve in terms of website aesthetics and product offering. Other than the price, one main difference is that Virgin Money will report your loan to the credit agencies, where Lending Karma will not. Assuming the loan stays in good standing, having this loan on your credit record will build your credit and increase your score. I expect that Lending Karma will begin to add additional financial services to their site as they carve out their niche. If you are looking for a cheap, easy way to document a loan with someone you know, take a look at Lending Karma and Virgin Money and choose which website and service you prefer.
