Updates to your Lending Club data

[lascott]

Updates to your Lending Club data
 
Dear <name>,
 
In a few weeks, we will be introducing a new feature for our borrower members. To accommodate this feature and your ability to filter for loans that include/exclude those criteria, we are adding four additional columns to our data files. The columns will appear on the following reports:
 
•   Loan Statistics downloadable file
•   Browse Loans downloadable file
•   My Notes downloadable file
 
Additionally, four additional fields will be returned for API users as part of the regular response when calling the GetListing endpoint.
 
The columns/fields will be added to the end of each file and should not affect your code. However, please verify that your systems can continue to operate uninterrupted. The new columns/fields are scheduled to be added on October 6th, and you will be able to find details on the changes on our developers page as of that date. If you wish to adjust your code now to bypass new columns/fields, please feel free to do so.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
 
Sincerely,
The Lending Club Team

The four new data fields are available as of today's 1:00 PM EST loan release. New columns in the browse notes file include:

-application_type (INDIVIDUAL or JOINT)
-annual_inc_joint
-dti_joint
-verified_status_joint

So far the historical notes files haven't been updated with these fields, but it will be interesting to see whether LC appends the new data to old records once they update for the Q3 loan issuance.

[rawraw]

Borrower member?

[lascott]

Borrower member?

Pretty strange wording.  Good thing they stated this otherwise I would not have determined it was for investors.

your ability to filter for loans that include/exclude those criteria

[Kombinator]

So what are the 4 new columns / fields they are adding?

[kbenson99]

How did you receive this notification from LC; email???  I surprised I didn't receive any notification...

[lascott]

How did you receive this notification from LC; email???  I surprised I didn't receive any notification...

I don't know. This email arrived: Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 1:11 PM

[PhilGD]

I haven't received a similar email, yet I've been investing with LC for close to 6 months now. Do you think it was supposed to be sent out to all investors?

[kbenson99]

Sent LC an email about not receiving the API update notification.  The response I received was as follows:

"We noticed that you were mistakenly excluded from the email distribution list for this update but we have added you to receive this type of communication going forward.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please feel free to contact us with any additional questions."

I should have been on the distribution list prior to this email since I asked to be put on it about 1 year ago.

[PhilGD]

The four new data fields are available as of today's 1:00 PM EST loan release. New columns in the browse notes file include:

-application_type (INDIVIDUAL or JOINT)
-annual_inc_joint
-dti_joint
-verified_status_joint

So far the historical notes files haven't been updated with these fields, but it will be interesting to see whether LC appends the new data to old records once they update for the Q3 loan issuance.

[Fred93]

Have they said when they're going to start filling these fields in?  I just looked at the listings file, and all the loans are "INDIVIDUAL", and the three following fields are empty. 

It is difficult to deal with fields that are sometimes present and sometimes not present. 

Have any "JOINT" loans shown up yet?

I presume that all past loans are of type "INDIVIDUAL", in which case we have zero historical data on joint loans, and no information to make informed choices. 

Given that a loan is either "INDIVIDUAL" or "JOINT", but never both, then why do they have separate fields for income, dti and verified?  Will one set of these fields always be empty or what?

The way this should be done is to explain what the heck they are doing, and give us the documentation at least one month before the change.  This surprise stuff is not functional.  Perhaps they think they are Apple or something.

[Rob L]

Perhaps they think they are Apple or something.

+1

[jennrod12]

So if I'm used to filtering on individual loans and one of my fields is "Max debt-to-income ratio", how would it treat that field on a Joint application, if there is nothing in that field because it's in the dti_joint field?

I am using just the Lending Club filters, and there is still only one Dti field to filter on - so maybe in their own filtering they choose the correct Dti field based on the application type.

Jenn

[jheizer]

Email I just got.


Now Available
 
We are excited to announce that Lending Club now offers joint application loans on our platform. If you do not want Automated Investing to fund joint application loans, you can opt-out starting today, October 6, 2015, by modifying your Automated Investing filters to exclude joint application loans.
 
For more information on joint application loans, please click here. For more information on how to update your Automated Investing filters, please click here.
 
Thank you for your continued support of Lending Club. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
 
Best regards,
 
The Lending Club Team

[jheizer]

Nice that they decided we just auto get these.  I just updated my code to ignore them for now.  I don't like to be surprised.  (especially when I never got the original notice either)

[Fred93]

I just sent the following to LC regarding the recent data changes...

Documentation for the recent addition of JOINT loans is lacking.  It is impossible to determine, given what has been documented, how to filter JOINT loans.  Therefore, I have set my software to ignore all JOINT loans until more information is available.  I don't see any other option.  Explanation follows.

There is now a boolean field applicationType, which tells us whether a loan is INDIVIDUAL or JOINT.  That's simple.

Then three fields have been added (duplicated) to supply info for joint loans: annualIncJoint, dtiJoint, isIncVJoint.

These new fields contain a sentence in their description which says they will be blank for INDIVIDUAL loans.  That's clear.  (Although I must say that fields which are sometimes present and sometimes not present are a real burden for the software that must use this data.  You have to be very careful to implement the correct meaning of filtering when data is sometimes not present.)

What is not clear is what happens to the old fields in Joint loans.  It isn't clear why new fields were added at all, because you haven't said.  It also isn't clear what you are doing with OTHER data fields that used to apply to an individual, such as the employment, inquiry, FICO fields, etc.

For example: We already have an annualInc field.  Why do we need an annualIncJoint field?  What happens to the annualInc field in a JOINT listing?

I can imagine several possibilities:

1. Only one set of these data fields will be filled in, and the other will be empty.  On JOINT loans, annualInc, dti, isIncV will be empty, and the data will be in annualIncJoint, dtiJoint, isIncVJoint.  One set filled in.  One set empty.  Simple, but hard to believe you would create three new fields when you could have simply used the old three, so this must not be right.

2. On JOINT loans, both sets of fields will be filled in with the same data.  This would make it easy on software that does filtering, as it could continue to use the old annualInc, dti, isIncV fileds for filtering, but then why would you have added the new fields, so this must not be right.

3. On JOINT loans, you fill both sets of fields with DIFFERENT data.  This would seem to justify having two sets of fields, but then we need an explanation for the meaning of the data in the old fields.

3a.  Maybe the old fields apply to one of the people in the joint loan.  Perhaps the person who filled out the application.  So if the husband filled out the application, then annualInc is his annual income, whereas annualIncJoint is the sum of both parties income.    Could this be it?

Please tell us which of these is correct, or whether perhaps none of them is correct.  Please include this information in the documentation.

Please explain the contents (or lack thereof) of the old annualInc, dti, isIncV fields when a loan is JOINT.  This information needs to be in the documentation so that we know how to use these fields in filtering.

Finally, what about other fields which seem to apply to individuals?

FICO fields:  You haven't provided new FICO fields for joint loans.  What does that mean?  Does the FICO field now apply to both people, or just one person, or what?  If it is one person, is it the best or the worst or the person who filled out the application, or what?  If it applies to both, is it the sum, or the arithmetic average, or... ?

Employment fields: You haven't provided new employment fields, so ...?  Is this one person's employment info, or the sum of both, or ...?

Home ownership fields: We don't know that the individuals on a joint loan live together, so now does the home ownership field refer to one person or both or what?

State and zip code: Why weren't these fields replicated?  What happens if the two individuals reside in different states or zip codes?

Inquiries last 6 months: Does this field apply to one person or both?  If one, is it the best, or worst, or ...?  If both, is it the sum, or average, or ...?

Same question applies to all the credit fields which used to apply to one individual.  If one, how did you pick the one.   If they now apply to two individuals, do you sum the numbers from two individuals or average them or what?