People Capital, a New Peer-to-Peer Student Lending Solution, Addresses Institutional, as Well as Student, Challenges
NEW YORK, July 1, 2008 - People Capital, a new media, consumer finance company, announced today that it had
secured additional funding to develop its next-generation peer-to-peer (p2p) lending platform to provide
improved access to student funding, as well enhanced tools and metrics to assess true creditworthiness.
"Capital market events have led to overly harsh treatment of student borrowing," said People Capital
founder and CEO Thomas Shelton. "Not only have lenders fled the market, but also, those that have stayed,
are unable to best distinguish between good and bad risks. We aim to address both issues.
"Our alternative platform will generate liquidity in the market by matching all lenders with all borrowers
- not just ‘family and friends,' but institutional lenders, too. Institutional lenders still remain, by far,
the largest source of capital in these markets.
"But more than just providing a platform," he continued, "our solution will offer additional
credit risk tools and metrics that provide insight into the future potential of borrowers - our patented human
capital score. Based on rigorous academic research by leading labor economists, it addresses the challenge
of how to assess the creditworthiness of those just starting their credit histories. Traditional methods ignore
one's potential. We aim to factor in such measures as SAT scores, GPAs, majors, etc. Our credit assessments will
allow lenders to make credit risk decisions based on the true potential of the borrower."
People Capital has formed a world-class team of professionals including veterans of the student lending, consumer
finance, credit ratings and new media industries. Founded by CEO Thomas Shelton, a student loans industry veteran,
People Capital recently announced the addition of two senior members of its management team, Chief Information
Officer John Nerenberg and Chief Product Officer Alan Samuels. John was, most recently, CIO at Curomax, a successful
Web 2.0 consumer finance start-up. As the senior technology officer and member of the corporate leadership team,
he was responsible for all IT activities including development, data center operations, QA and IT security for this
Internet-based loan origination portal with interfaces to 25 banks. Prior to that he was the CIO of CIT Commercial
Finance. Alan has over 17 years of financial services experience leading product development, marketing and business
development functions. His last 10 years have been spent in the credit ratings industry as a senior executive at both
Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings.
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