Lending Club and its chief rival, Prosper, are still tiny. They’ve generated less than $10 billion in loans, which is but a speck in the $3 trillion consumer lending market. Yet they’re attracting loads of attention. Executives from Citigroup and Morgan Stanley serve as directors of peer-to-peer players, and Wells Fargo’s investment fund is the largest investor in Lending Club. Lending Club’s stock offering in December of 2014 was the biggest tech IPO of the year. It raised $870 million and reached a valuation of $9 billion, making it the fifteenth most valuable bank in America.
