Countries

Milaap Raises 1.1M US$

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P2P microfinance service Milaap (see earlier coverage on P2P-Banking.com) raised 1.1 million US$ from Jungle Ventures (Singapore), Toivo Annus,Lionrock Capital, Jayesh Parekh and Unitus Seed Fund. The current round of funds will be utilized to expand engineering and marketing investments for enhancing the online product experience, and to invest in scaling up marketing and outreach efforts.

Milaap says that so far 100% of the microfinance loans originated have been paid back.

Ratesetter Raises 5M Funding – Valued at over 30M

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Ratesetter has raised 5 million GBP funding in June from existing shareholders, who include Peel Hunt founder Charles Peel, fund manager John Chatfeild-Roberts and Lazard chairman Ken Costa, plus a new Hong Kong-based investor. The founder Peter Behrens and Rhydian Lewis still own an almost 40% stake in the company which in this round had a valuation of more than 30 million GBP. Ratesetter, which aims to fund over 100 million GBP in p2p loans this year, reached break-even in January and will use the new capital to foster further growth.

(Source: Lucy Tobin, London Evening Standard, July 1st 2013)

Why Friendsclear Closed

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Friendsclear, a french p2p lending service, has been operating for more than 3 years. When I learned in the end of May that the company is closing down, I contacted the founders to find out why. Nicolas Guillaume, co-founder of Friendsclear, told P2P-Banking.com:

The key points are the following:
– We have been in a quiet period following french regulator’s remarks for about 8 month (april to dec 2012) and we relaunched our platform in a new model compliant with regulator’s remarks in december 2012
– Regulator’s remarks were mainly on a better risk management for client and the capacity for the bank to refuse any loan without explication (“discretionary”)
– We modified our crowdfunding model with a project mitigation model and a guarantee in capital by our banking partner (Credit Agricole)
– We had a very progressive and slow restart due to extended legal process with our banking partner (regulator’s remarks made them very meticulous)
– We considered regulator’s remarks as non legaly based  but our banking partner was not ready to discuss with the regulator.
– French regulator has published a guide for crowdfunding not friendly with crowdfunding platform and has received complaints about (money collect need a emoney licence, equity need an extensive broker licence,…)
Regulation is planned to be changed in September 2013
– With capital guarantee by our banking partner we had 2 selection processes, one by internauts and the other through traditional banking process. Theses 2 processes were divergent in criteria, timing and objectives and resulted in a very weak pipe channel.
– Althought diagnostic was clear, we took time to give up and convince all our stackholders and partner to stop.
For more details I recommend Nicolas’ blog post (original in french; english by Google translate)

Smava with Higher Net Loss for the Year 2011

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German p2p lending Smava had a high net loss for the year 2011. Documents available to P2P-Banking.com show that Smava incurred a net loss of 2.77 million Euro (approx. 3.68 million US$) in 2011; up from 1.75 million EUR in 2010. Overall loss carried forward up to the end of 2011 was 7.7 million EUR (approx 10.2 million US$). Smava did raise new capital in 2011. They had a cash reserve of 1.98 million EUR in the end of 2011. The high burn rate might have contributed to Smavas decision to change the business model in early 2012 moving away from p2p lending.
No financial figures were available to P2P-Banking.com for later periods.