LendingClub (LC) Risk Factors

The following table shows the trading arrangements intended to satisfy the affirmative defense conditions of Rule 10b5-1(c) adopted by the Company's directors and executive officers during the third quarter of 2024:Name and TitleAdoption DateExpiration DateAggregate Number of Shares to be Sold Jordan Cheng, General Counsel and Corporate SecretaryAugust 1, 2024February 8, 2025Up to 25,000 Other than disclosed above, during the third quarter of 2024, none of the Company's directors or executive officers adopted or terminated any contract, instruction or written plan for the purchase or sale of the Company's securities that was intended to satisfy the affirmative defense conditions of Rule 10b5-1(c) or any "non-Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement." In the Form 10-Q filed on May 1, 2024 (the May 2024 10-Q), the Company disclosed a Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plan entered into by Erin Selleck (the Selleck Trading Plan). The expiration date of the Selleck Trading Plan, per its original terms, is February 5, 2025, not January 31, 2025, as disclosed in the May 2024 10-Q.

We believe the technology platform that powers our marketplace bank enables us to deliver solutions to customers and provides a significant time and cost advantage over traditional banks. The satisfactory performance, reliability and availability of our technology and underlying network infrastructure are critical to our operations, customer service and reputation. Like all information systems and technology, our systems may contain or develop material errors, failures, vulnerabilities or bugs, particularly when new features or capabilities are released, and may be subject to computer viruses or other malicious code, break-ins, phishing impersonation attacks, attempts to overload our servers with denial-of-service or other attacks, ransomware and similar incidents or disruptions from unauthorized use of our computer systems, as well as unintentional incidents causing data leakage, any of which could lead to interruptions, delays or make it difficult or impossible for us to deliver a satisfactory experience to our customers. Our failure to maintain satisfactory performance, reliability and availability of our technology and underlying network infrastructure may impair our ability to attract new customers and retain existing customers, which could have a material adverse effect on our business. Our business involves the collection, storage, processing and transmission of customers' personal information, including their financial information. The highly automated nature of our marketplace bank, our reliance on digital technologies and the types and amount of data collected, stored and processed on our systems make us an attractive target and subject to cyber-attacks, computer viruses, ransomware, physical or electronic break-ins and similar disruptions. While we have taken steps to protect confidential information that we collect, create, or have access to, our security measures or those of our third-party vendors and business partners are subject to breach. Unauthorized access to our proprietary business information or customer data may be obtained through, among other things, break-ins, sabotage, computer malware, viruses, social engineering, ransomware attacks, hacking into the systems or facilities of us or our partners, vendors, or customers, exposing and exploiting design flaws in our software, or other misconduct, including by state-sponsored and other sophisticated organizations. Such incidents have become more prevalent in recent years and may target our systems or facilities or those of our partners, vendors, or customers. For example, outside parties have attempted to fraudulently induce employees, vendors, customers, and others to disclose sensitive or confidential information in order to gain access to our systems. Our security measures could also be compromised by our personnel, theft or errors, or be insufficient to prevent exploitation of security vulnerabilities in software or systems on which we rely. Cyber-attacks have occurred on our systems in the past and may occur on our systems in the future. Although in 2023, we did not suffer material costs or disruption to our business from any such incident, unauthorized access to our marketplace bank and servicing systems can result in confidential borrower and investor information being stolen and potentially used for criminal purposes. Breaches of our security measures could negatively impact our relationships with customers, lead to interruptions or delays or make it difficult or impossible for us to deliver a satisfactory experience to our customers, and expose us to liability related to the loss of the information, time-consuming expensive litigation and negative publicity. Moreover, any future security breach may also result in the theft of our intellectual property, proprietary data, or trade secrets, which could have a material adverse impact on our reputation, business operations and financial performance. We also may be required to notify regulators, affected individuals and/or stockholders about any actual or perceived data breach involving personal information or material cybersecurity incident within strict time periods. This notice may be difficult to provide in a timely fashion for many reasons, including due to the complexity of gathering, verifying and analyzing relevant information. Furthermore, disclosures regarding a security breach may be costly to implement and often lead to widespread negative publicity, which may cause customers to lose confidence in the effectiveness of our data security measures. Any security breach, whether actual or perceived, would harm our reputation, we could lose borrowers, investors and ecosystem partners and our business and operations could be adversely affected. Because there are many different cybercrime and hacking techniques and such techniques continue to evolve, we may be unable to anticipate attempted security breaches, react in a timely manner or implement adequate preventative measures. Cyber-attacks may take advantage of weaknesses in third-party technology or standards of which we are unaware or that we do not control and may not be recognized until long after they have been launched. Certain efforts may be state-sponsored or from other sophisticated organizations, and supported by significant financial and technological resources, making them even more difficult to detect. Efforts to prevent hackers from disrupting our services or otherwise accessing our systems are expensive to develop, implement, and maintain. Such efforts require ongoing monitoring and updating as technologies change and efforts to overcome security measures become more sophisticated and may limit the functionality of, or otherwise adversely impact, our service offerings and systems. The systems we rely upon also remain vulnerable to damage or interruption from a number of other factors, including the failure of our network or software systems, natural disasters, terrorism, telecommunication failures, human error, third-party error, other-man made problems, and similar events or disruptions. Any interruptions or delays in our technology systems or service, whether accidental or willful, could harm our relationships with our customers and our reputation. Additionally, in the event of damage or interruption, our insurance policies may not adequately compensate us for any losses that we may incur. Our disaster recovery plan has not been tested under actual disaster conditions, and we may not have sufficient capacity to recover all data and services in the event of an outage. These factors could prevent us from processing or posting payments on loans, impact our bank operations, damage our brand and reputation, divert our employees' attention, reduce our revenue, subject us to liability and cause customers to abandon our marketplace bank platform, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Aspects of our platform include software covered by open source licenses, which may include, by way of example, GNU General Public License and the Apache License. Open source license terms are often ambiguous, and there is little or no legal precedent governing the interpretation of many of the terms of certain of these licenses. Therefore, the potential impact of such terms on our business is somewhat unknown. If portions of our proprietary software are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release and grant royalty-free licenses under the affected portions of our proprietary source code, re-engineer all or a portion of our technologies or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and products. There can be no assurance that efforts we take to monitor the use of open source software to avoid uses in a manner that would require us to disclose or grant licenses under our proprietary source code will be successful, and such use could inadvertently occur. This could harm our intellectual property position and have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, cash flow, and financial condition. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of the software. Many of the risks associated with use of open source software cannot be eliminated, and could adversely affect our business.

We believe our success depends on the efforts and talents of our employees, including software engineers, financial, banking, credit and risk personnel, and marketing professionals. Our future success depends on our continued ability to attract, develop, motivate and retain highly qualified and skilled employees. Competition for highly skilled technical and financial personnel, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, is extremely intense. Building and maintaining a positive culture and work environment that reinforces our values is also critical to attracting and retaining employees. We have previously experienced a high attrition rate from employees and while attrition rates have materially reduced recently, they may again become elevated. We periodically make adjustments to our compensation levels and structures as our business and the competitive market for talent evolves. Further, many of the companies with which we compete for experienced employees have greater resources than we have and may be able to offer more attractive terms of employment. While we strive to create a fulfilling workplace with competitive compensation, certain existing and prospective employees may find our workplace and/or compensation levels and structures to be unattractive, which may adversely impact our business by compromising our ability to retain and recruit an appropriately skilled workforce. Additionally, changes in U.S. immigration policy may make it difficult to renew or obtain visas for certain highly skilled employees that we have hired or are recruiting. In addition to attracting and retaining highly skilled employees in general, our future performance depends, in part, on our ability to attract and retain key personnel, including our executive officers, senior management team and other key personnel, all of whom would be difficult to replace. In 2023, our total headcount decreased by 560 employees compared to the prior year, primarily due to the workforce reduction plans we implemented during the year. These reductions in workforce resulted in the termination of a number of highly contributing employees as well as material reductions in the size and capabilities of a number of our functions, such as recruiting. Further, the reductions in workforce may negatively impact employee morale and our culture, which may increase attrition rates and negatively impact future recruiting efforts. The loss of the services of our executive officers, members of our senior management team or key employees and functions, and the process to replace and/or rebuild any of them, involve significant time and expense and distraction that may significantly delay or prevent the achievement of our business objectives or impair our operations or results.

Maintaining, protecting and promoting our brand is critical to achieving widespread acceptance of our products and services and expanding our base of customers. Maintaining, protecting and promoting our brand depends on many factors, including our ability to continue to provide useful, reliable, secure and innovative products and services, as well as our ability to maintain trust. Our brand can be harmed in many ways, including failure by us or our partners to satisfy expectations of service and quality, inadequate protection of sensitive information, failure to maintain or provide adequate or accurate documentation and/or disclosures, compliance failures, failure to comply with contractual obligations, regulatory requests, inquiries or proceedings, litigation and other claims, employee misconduct and misconduct by our partners. We have also been, and may in the future be, the target of incomplete, inaccurate and/or misleading statements about our company, our business, and/or our products and services. Furthermore, our ability to maintain, protect and promote our brand is partially dependent on visibility and customer reviews on third-party platforms. Changes in the way these platforms operate could make the maintenance, protection and promotion of our products and services and our brand more expensive or more difficult. Many of our stakeholders are becoming increasingly interested in our environmental, social, governance and other sustainability responsibilities, strategy and related disclosures. For example, certain of our marketplace investors and equity investors have inquired about our progress and disclosures on this topic. Further, this area of disclosure is subject to state legislation and proposed rules from the SEC, which the Company continues to monitor and will comply with as applicable. For example, in October 2023, California adopted the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act and the Climate-Related Financial Risk Act, which, among other things, will require certain companies doing business in California to disclose their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and their climate-related financial risks and measures being taken to reduce such risks. As regulations regarding these reporting obligations are still in development, we cannot yet predict the full impact of these laws and their corresponding regulations and future enforcement activity on our business, financial condition, results of operations, brand or reputation. Our absolute and relative progress and disclosures, or lack thereof, on environmental, social, governance and other sustainability matters could impact our reputation, brand and the willingness of certain platform and equity investors to hold our loans or common stock, respectively. If we do not successfully maintain, protect and promote our brand we may be unable to maintain and/or expand our base of customers and investors, which may materially harm our business.

Our business operations are subject to interruption by, among other things, political events, terrorism, military conflict or acts of war (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip), cyber-attacks, public health issues (such as the COVID-19 pandemic), natural disasters, severe weather, climate change (including longer-term shifts in climate patterns, such as extreme heat, sea level rise and more frequent and prolonged drought), infrastructure failure or outages (including power outages), labor disputes and other events which could: (i) decrease demand for our products and services, (ii) adversely affect the macroeconomy and/or our customers, or (iii) make it difficult or impossible for us to deliver a satisfactory experience to our customers. Any such events could also affect the Company by impacting the stability of our deposit base, impairing the ability of our borrowers to repay their outstanding loans, causing significant property damage or otherwise impair the value of collateral securing our loans, and/or resulting in loss of revenue and/or cause us to incur additional expenses. While we may undertake measures indicated to mitigate the adverse impacts of such events, there are no assurances that any of the measures we take will be sufficient or successful. Furthermore, in the event of any disruption to our operations or those of the companies with whom we do business with, we could experience delays in product development, marketing, operations and customer service efforts, incur significant losses, require substantial recovery time and experience significant expenditures in order to resume or maintain operations, any of which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, the responses thereto (such as sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries) and any expansion thereof have had, and may continue to have, unpredictable and/or adverse effects on the domestic and global economy and financial markets. Although we have not yet experienced any material direct impact from the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, in part because our business is conducted exclusively in the United States, our business, financial condition or results of operations may be impacted if the conflict prolongs and/or its impact exacerbates. Further, the geopolitical conflicts such as the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and the conflict in the Gaza Strip, and their impacts, have had, and may continue to have, the effect of heightening many of the other risks described in "Item 1A. Risk Factors" and elsewhere in our Annual Report, such as escalating inflation, elevating the possibility of a decline in economic conditions and increasing cybersecurity risk.