LUK Leucadia National Corp.

A consortium of 200 small banks has temporarily suspended a program of loan purchases from LendingClub Corp. as the banks review the events that led to the ouster of the online lender's chief executive, Renaud Laplanche.

The program, which brought together community banks across the country with the decade-old San Francisco company, has been suspended since Monday, according to Leland Merrill, a board member of BancAlliance and an executive at Newport, R.I.-based BankNewport.

LendingClub said Monday morning that Mr. Laplanche resigned after the board found the company had altered dates on loans that were sold to Jefferies Group. The company said it repurchased the loans and sold them at par to an undisclosed third party.

The announcement has forced some buyers of LendingClub loans to review their procedures for buying off LendingClub's online platform. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Jefferies LLC have also stopped their buying of the company's loans, according to a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday.

BancAlliance entered into the program with LendingClub last year. In the deal, the alliance facilitates purchases by community banks of LendingClub loans. Since then, BancAlliance members have purchased around $200 million of loans from LendingClub, according to Mr. Merrill.

BancAlliance can suspend the program or terminate it if it determines it can no longer recommend LendingClub loans to its members. Member banks would be free to establish independent relationships with LendingClub but would lose the advantages of scale and collective negotiation it gets from operating as a group.

If BankAlliance does decide to continue the program, individual banks will also have to make their own determinations about whether to keep buying loans from LendingClub.

BankNewport is one of the largest purchasers under the program, with a portfolio of $25 million of LendingClub loans. On the first business day of each month, it places an order for new loans, typically around $1 million to $1.5 million, to replace loan principal as it is paid down.

It also makes some additional purchases of loans made by LendingClub to BankNewport customers. BankNewport executives said it is more cost-effective to have LendingClub originate the loans than for the bank to underwrite them.

"They have a scale we don't have here," Mr. Merrill said.

Banks are a significant source of funds for LendingClub. In February, Mr. Laplanche said banks provide about 25% of the capital for LendingClub loans. In the first quarter, that amount grew to more than one-third, as LendingClub funding from banks stood at $947 million, more than double the amount in the first quarter of 2015.

Kearny Financial Corp., the holding company for New Jersey-based BancAlliance member Kearny Bank, had $21.4 million in LendingClub-originated loans on its books as of March 31, according to the company's quarterly report. The bank has said it plans to limit its LendingClub portfolio to $25 million for now. Craig Montanaro, Kearny's chief executive, couldn't immediately be reached for comment.​

BancAlliance plays a central role in LendingClub's relationship with its community bank members. It is managed by Alliance Partners, an SEC-registered investment adviser that acts as asset manager for the consortium.

Alliance Partners specified the criteria for the loans that its members purchase and oversees LendingClub's compliance with those criteria.

BankNewport says it occasionally tests a sample of the loans to monitor their quality but that most of the oversight is done by AlliancePartners. Bank executives said they haven't reviewed previously purchased loans based on Mr. Laplanche's departure Monday.

Alliance Partners has communicated frequently with LendingClub this week and has been providing updates to its members, a person with knowledge of the situation said. Because BankNewport buys loans on the first of each month, the suspension of the BancAlliance program won't have any practical effect for it until June 1. Executives at the bank said they expect the program will be restored before that point.

--Michael Rapoport contributed to this article

Write to John Carney at john.carney@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 12, 2016 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)

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