~ ~ ~ December 2010 Update: Earning 15.6% NAR on Lending Club investment portfolio. ~ ~ ~

Now that I’ve become something of a Lending Club investor junkie, and who wouldn’t when earning 14%, I’ve probably spent several hours per month cruising the loan application database searching for the perfect P2P lending notes (e.g. one that won’t default).

Lending Club’s loan application filters are awesome, without question, but reviewing large quantities of promissory notes based upon my personal social lending investment strategy takes a fairly substantial amount of time. It’s possible I could be doing it all wrong, but true to my own form, I’m way too much of a control freak to allow Lending Club’s automated investing plan to invest my funds for me, and I’d rather be slow and methodical (and right) than fast and efficient (and wrong) any day.

Thankfully, I’ve located a means of speeding up the process by downloading an Excel spreadsheet (thanks to reader Archie R.) listing each borrower’s information in one easy reviewable document (see screenshot).

Once you download the spreadsheet, you will see a rather large, but manageable, dataset that you can organize and manipulate any way that makes sense to you. Perfect for any Excel junkie or data monger like me who loves to use their owns strategies and screens.

How to Use the Loan Applicant Spreadsheet

If you’re not looking to speed up your loan filtering process or you’re not looking for very specific information, then you’re probably better sticking with the Lending Club filters. It’s simply not worth reorganizing the spreadsheet and digging through all that data if you’re not that picky of an investor or your investing strategy isn’t that specific.

However, if you’re trying to quickly locate data not available in the filters or you’re looking for one (or more) very specific piece of data (e.g. Job Title, Employer, etc.) then an all in one spreadsheet is exactly what you’re looking for.

Here’s a quick crash course on how to download and use the spreadsheet when screening by “Job Title” and “Employer”:

1. Click the “Browse Notes” link after logging into your account.
2. Click the “Download All” link at the bottom of the page (see screenshot highlighted by red oval).
3. Open the spreadsheet from your downloads folder.
4. Locate the columns titled “Job Title” and/or “Employer”.
5. Scroll through the spreadsheet and highlight the notes with the “Job Title”  or “Employer” that you wish to buy.
6. Re-enter the Lending Club loan application database, and locate those notes by any process you find the most efficient. (I find that locating the note by state, then interest rate works best: 1) filter all notes by the state on your chosen note, 2) sort the state filtered notes by interest rate, 3) confirm the note in the database is the note in your spreadsheet by the Loan ID# and Note ID#. This takes less than a minute or two once you get the hang of it.)

And it’s just that simple. Granted, it might be overkill, but I like to invest in a fairly specific subset of Lending Club’s promissory notes.

Therefore, this “Lending Club spreadsheet loan screening hack” provides me with a very efficient means of reviewing Lending Club’s promissory note inventory in one simple spreadsheet. Before using this method, I spent a fairly substantial amount of time individually clicking on each note just to review who a prospective borrower works for and what they do for a living (e.g. job security), whereas now, I can download the spreadsheet, cherry pick the notes based on job security (among other things), and jump back into the database and buy half a dozen notes within 10 to 20 minutes.

I’m sure this feature has a multitude of other uses, so if you are using it for something completely different or have an idea how it can better be used, please let me know in the comments section below.

Quarterly Lending Club Investment Portfolio Updates

December 2010 Update: Currently earning 15.6% NAR on Lending Club investment portfolio.

September 2010 Update: Currently earning 15% ROI on my Lending Club investment portfolio.

June 2010 Update: Currently earning 14.2% ROI on my Lending Club investment portfolio.

March 2010 Update: Currently earning 13.6% ROI on my Lending Club investment portfolio.