LendingClub - all those pennies are adding up

Seems I'm spending more time blogging about LendingClub than I'm blogging about Prosper lately. Well, Prosper is in the doldrums right now. I can't work up enough enthusiasm to restart investing there (my current portfolio is aging quite nicely, thanks) and the forums have become quite boring lately. P2P lending isn't what it used to be a short year ago.

So in the meantime, I have this little portfolio over on LendingClub and their antics are frankly weird.

All my loans now have had the opportunity to make one payment, so I thought I'd take a look at how things are shaping up.

Remember (for those of you not wanting to search back in my blog), here is my portfolio overview:




My "expected monthly payment" should be $13.91. See? The number is right there in black and white. Now usually, with fixed-term repayments, the monthly payment is exactly the same every month, only the portion going on interest varies slightly based on the number of days in the month. So I am fully expecting to see $13.91 credited to my account every month.

Here is the header of the "Performance" tab of my portfolio.



Hey! What's this? Total Payments $13.85? That's short a whopping 6 pennies! Who didn't pay their loan in full?






That's weird. On first glance every borrower paid and is "current." Look closer, and you will notice that s few of the loans actually paid a penny less than the expected monthly payment. If they keep that up, they'll never get to pay off the loan in the agreed-upon time.

The other option is that LendingClub isn't doing the math as carefully as Prosper is doing it. Prosper has display capabilities up to 6 decimals for fractions of a penny and their math is usually very accurate. Doesn't seem at first glance that LendingClub is as careful with my pennies as Prosper is.