Lending Club today published the results for the 2nd quarter.
(Source: Lending Club)
Author: wiseclerk
Silver Bullion Reports First Year Results for Gold & Silver Secured P2P loans
Silver Bullion Pte Ltd in Singapore reported today, on the anniversary of the launch of their bullion secured peer-to-peer(P2P) loan platform, that the platform has funded over S$11 million across more than 400 successfully matched loans. There were zero occurrences of borrowers defaulting on their loans. One hundred percent of lenders, with loan tenures expiring within the first year, received their principle with interest on time.
Launched on 5th August 2015, Silver Bullion offers a p2p marketplace that allows borrowers to obtain a loan using physical gold and silver bullion as collateral. This gives lenders, seeking a good rate of return, confidence that their investments are safe.
Silver Bullion’s CEO, Gregor Gregersen, commented: ‘The first year results of our P2P loan platform shows that owners of physical gold and silver like to have the option to be able to borrow short term funds at good rates with the bullion that they store with us. Now, they are able to reinvest with the borrowed funds whilst continuing to own bullion and benefit from rising gold and silver prices.’
P2P-Banking.com conducted an interview with Gregersen earlier this year.
Due to the safety that Silver Bullion’s loan platform gives to lenders, 72% of the matched loans were initiated by borrowers. The company has seen more than 30 loans matched consistently each month since March 2016 – a rate of more than 1 matched loan per day. Interest rates across all loan tenures currently hovers between 2.5% and 4.5% per annum.
Unlike unsecured P2P lending platforms, loans matched by Silver Bullion’s lending platform are fully backed by physical gold and silver. Loans with tenures longer than 6 months begin with a collateral-to-loan value of 200%. The exceptions are loans with the 1 month tenure which have a lower collateral-to-loan value of 160%.<
Borrowers’ collateralized bullion is stored at Silver Bullion’s vault, The Safe House. They are covered by one of the most comprehensive insurance policies in the industry that also insures against inside jobs and any unexplained losses.
International P2P Lending Marketplaces – Loan Volumes July 2016
The following table lists the loan originations of p2p lending platforms in July. Zopa leads ahead of Funding Circle and Ratesetter. Assetz Capital and Lendinvest achieved a big surge in volume. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 341 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.
Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of marketplaces open to international investors. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available.
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in July 2016. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.
*Prosper and Lending Club no longer publish origination data for the most recent month.
Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading
Lendico and PostFinance Launch Joint Venture in Switzerland
PostFinance one of the largest five retail banking institutions in Switzerland will partner with Lendico to launch joint venture Lendico Schweiz, which will facilitate loans to SMEs in Switzerland.
From the last quarter of 2016 onwards, the company will facilitate crowdfunding for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland. It is entering the market in close collaboration with PostFinance, a subsidiary of postal carrier Schweizerische Post.
Together the partners would like to establish a new form of SME financing in Switzerland. The aim of the joint venture is to provide the numerous Swiss SMEs with a modern alternative to traditional bank financing. The two partners are contributing their complementary expertise in customer contact and the entire lending and repayment process to the joint venture.
Sources say PostFinance was barred by regulation to directly lend to SMEs and had to find a third party partner to enter this market.
‘With 110 years of experience in Swiss banking services and around three million customers, we can think of no better partner than PostFinance for our entry into the Swiss market. As part of the continued expansion of an international credit marketplace, this joint venture represents a significant step in our business development,’ says Dr Dominik Steinkühler, co-founder and managing director of Lendico.
Hansruedi Köng, CEO of PostFinance, is delighted to be able to join forces with Lendico, a partner which has established itself and enjoyed success internationally in a rapidly expanding industry. ‘Our vision for this cooperation is to take crowdlending in Switzerland from niche status to the mass market. The combination of Lendico’s innovative capacity and our structures in Switzerland offers the best conditions for Lendico Schweiz AG to become a market leader in the future.’
Spain: CNMV authorizes MytripleA & Lendix as crowdlending platforms
The Spanish Securities Exchange Commission (CNMV, Spain’s financial regulator) has authorized MytripleA as a Platform for Participatory Financing, the formal name for a p2p lending platform. This is one of the first actions to implement Law 5/2015 Promotion of Corporate Financing. MytripleA already benefits from a Payment Institution license (which can be passported within the EU) granted by the Bank of Spain, which authorizes MytripleA to make loan disbursements and receive loan instalments within the regulatory environment for banking payments. This is an additional regulatory requirement in Spain, which is not required by other European countries.
With this new authorization, MyTripleA becomes the first crowdlending platform to have both of the required authorizations in Spain. Competitors entering Spain, will not be able to use the the so-called passporting provisions from a financial regulator outside of Spain and will need to apply for a Platform for Participatory Financing license before being able to operate in compliance with Spanish regulations Law 5/2015 Promotion of Corporate Finance provided a unified legal framework for crowdlending platforms and securitized funds, and made CNMV responsible for their creation, authorization and supervision. Crowdlending has experienced rapid growth across Europe. The Spanish market last year grew 266% according to the website P2P-Banking.com. Within the new regulatory framework and with the supervision of CNMV, a greater degree of awareness of the alternative financial services market is expected.
French Lendix announced that it received its formal CNMV accreditation to operate as a P2P lending platform in Spain. The Spanish entity will be the first Lendix international market to open. It will target financing of credits to SME, for amounts ranging from 30,000 to 2,000,000 Euro, duration of 18 to 60 months and at interestrates comprises between 5.5% et 12%. Companies presented on the platform will be selected and analyzed by Lendix credit analysis team and will need to generate a turnover of at least €400’000. Non accredited private investors* will be able to lend up to 3,000 Euro per project with a total maximum yearly amount of 10,000 Euro, while no limit will apply to accredited private investors nor institutional investors. The launch of Lendix’s spanish platform is scheduled for Q4 2016.
Equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube also received authorization.
Friday Fun: Bondora’s Personalized Investment Video
Just before the weekend Bondora sent me an email with a personalized investment overview video (click here to see mine; I was not able to embed it directly here in the blog). The video page encourages sharing via social media (Google, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter), so obviously an aim is to aid in investor marketing. In future I might need to spend less effort on my personal portfolio reviews and post the video instead (just kidding). The highlighted return figure is higher than my own calculations, but I did achieve a high return on Bondora over the past years.
Have you seen other attempts on viral marketing via investors by p2p lending marketplaces? Let me know in the comments, please.
EDIT: Succeeded in embedding the video now: