Lendingtree CEO On What's Causing The Stock's Rally

Shares of Lendingtree Inc TREE have witnessed a significant rally, up more than 28 percent in past month and over 50 percent in the past year. Lendingtree Chairman, Founder and CEO Doug Lebda was on CNBC recently to discuss what's driving this rally and to give his opinion on the quality of loans being underwritten.

Well Positioned For Transition From Offline To Online

"Lenders are absolutely starting to lend money again, which is great," Lebda said.

"So, they are widening out their credit bands, but also you have got new types of lenders coming online – so called marketplace platforms – they have become very good clients of ours."

He continued, "We have had a trend toward mobile, but the most important thing that's happening is that this is probably the last industry to transform from offline to online in the way the travel and so many other industries did. And we are positioned very well for that."

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Loan For Everyone

Lebda was asked what he thinks about the recent increase in subprime loans and the overall quality of the loans.

He replied, "I think the pendulum swung so far to the conservative side, that now we are coming back towards what I'll call just a more normal environment. And ultimately, I believe it's always been my vision for 17 years – that the consumer credit market should be very similar to the corporate credit market [in] that everybody can get a loan."

He explained, "It's just very different based on your actual risk profile. And I think that's where we are heading overtime: where banks are doing automated underwriting, risk-based pricing in a highly automated consumer-friendly way and Lendingtree is really well positioned to really be the search engine for money in that new world order," Lebda concluded.