Well, I'm still waiting for my bank account to be confirmed at IOU Central (it has only really been 1 business day, perhaps not even 1 because of the Family Day thing), so here's just a bit of a summary of the current loans looking for funding.

As of 6PM on February 18, 2008 there are:

• 9 loans posted for funds
• 5 loans at the "A" credit rating, with an average credit rating of 786 (just averaged between each user). Each loan is for $1000. 4 Loans are for 1 month, and 1 is for 12 months. Interest rates range from 6% to 8%
• 1 loan at the "B" credit rating. Credit rating is 652, the loan is for $1000 @ 6% for a period of 1 month. Oddly the description says that it is for "purchasing new appliances", which is a bit suspect, where will the money come from next month? Someone has already posed the question to the user.
• 3 loans at the "C" credit rating. Credit ratings are an average of 603. Loans are for $1000, $1050 and $15000. Interest rates are 7.5%, 7.0% and 10.0% respectively, for terms of 12, 3 and 24 months respectively
• Surprisingly no loans yet at the "R" and "HR" rating, whom you would think have the most to save from a service like this (going from 20% to 15% is a bigger gain than going from 8% to 6% interest rates)

Like I mentioned in my posting on recommendations for potential borrowers, there is a general lack of information provided in the postings. At this point in time, a decent write-up could really set a borrower above the rest and help get themselves funded. Luckily, there is a Question and Answer mechanism available, but it would look a lot better on the borrowers if they were a bit upfront about their information.

So far, loans are ranging from 0% to 33% funded. The 33% funded loan still has 6 days left, but I'm not sure if it will end up getting funded or not. The D/I ratio is decent, the loan length would require a relatively low payment of about $350/month, which may or may not be doable based upon their income, but the credit rating isn't great.

We'll see if these first batch of loans get funded or not. I'm really curious as to whether loans will get funded at these interest rates. I guess IOU Central themselves are the only ones that really knows whether there are a lot of patient lenders that are just waiting for better rates or not. But even then, I guess they really have no idea themselves if lenders are willing to just loan $25 or $25000, or where in between. They don't really have information on linked checking account balances, just how much users have in their IOU Central accounts.

So, I think a lot of people are biting their finger nails right now just to see what will happen, not only borrowers or lenders, but IOU Central, and other near-entrants like Communitylend and Peermint too. Luckily, there has been coverage in all of the major Canadian daily newspapers, like the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post, among others.