UK

Seedrs Raises 10M Series A

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Seedrs logoUK platform Seedrs has raised a 10 million GBP series A round led by Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc and Augmentum Capital. The capital raised will be used to launch Seedrs in the US market.

Furthermore, Seedrs is to launch a 2.5 million GBP crowd funding campaign to give existing shareholders and new investors the opportunity to participate in the round. The details will be announced later.

Seedrs plans to expand its marketing efforts in the UK and Europe, increase platform development activities and launch its business in the United States.

This Seedrs valuation is now at 30 million GBP on a fully-diluted, post-money basis. I wrote a review of my experiences with investing on Seedrs in March. Continue reading →

Rebuildingsociety offers one Business the First 25K Interest Free

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Rebuilding Society LogoUK p2p lending marketplace Rebuildingsociety currently offers a promotion where one business will receive 25,000 GBP of their loan interest free. Loan applications received until 31 August 2015 will enter into the promotion.

Daniel Rajkumar, CEO of Rebuildingsociety.com, said: ‘Companies seeking loans now have peer-to-peer platforms as a mainstream alternative to the banks and I’m delighted to be giving a 25,000 GBP interest free loan to a business. Businesses seeking loan finance can approach us either through commercial finance brokers or directly and our platform will typically enable viable applications to get finance within 4 weeks.’

Will Funding Circle Expand Into Europe?

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Note: The following is a synopsis from an Funding Circle investor event in London yesterday. I did not attend, therefore it is based on notes that attending investors have published.* I selected only some aspects from these notes, that I found interesting, so the following probably omits many topics from the meeting and is by no means complete.

Funding Circle confirmed that it has been investing own money (approx. 760K GBP) in loans on the platform. So far none of these loans have been sold on the secondary market.
Property loans were a new area for Funding Circle. To get it started Funding Circle used cash backs to incentivise investors. So far institutional investors have not invested into the property loans but this is likely to change soon.

Funding Circle sees retail and institutional investors as equally important for their lender mix in the future. Cashbacks are expected to be reduced in future as they were more important when new markets were introduced than now.

Funding Circle is working on improvements on the website and in communication to better meet the expectations of investors. The risk model is performing increasingly well over time. They also capture and monitor data about borrowers that they reject, watching for CCJs and other credit events.  This has enabled them to develop a more complete model, and ultimately enabled them to launch the E risk band.  E borrowers are people that they would previously have had to reject, but now they understand them well enough to feel they can accurately model the default risk.
Personal Guarantees are factored in to the risk banding process, and also considered in the manual underwriting stage; they do make an assessment of the “value” of the PG, but it’s aggregated amongst lots of other stats to produce an overall ‘score’.

In collections Funding Circle has  reduced their late rate (percentage of loans making late repayments) from 1.4% to 0.7% since they brought the function in house.
The recovery rate is currently at 20p/£1, but this is skewed by the vast volume of loans being made; Funding Circle expect this would be at c. 43p/£1 if the loan book was frozen.

Funding Circle produced a tool, for MPs, prior to the 2015 election, to show what businesses in what constituencies were borrowing what, from whom (and presumably, by extension, risk bandings etc).  This tool will be made available to investors via the Funding Circle website soon. Continue reading →

Sign Up for Lendit Europe Conference in London in October

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LendIt Europe will be held in London on October 20-21, 2015. LendIt is the major conference for the p2p lending industry with venues in New York, San Francisco, China and London. I attended Lendit London last year and can recommend it to anybody in the p2p lending industry. You can read my Lendit Recap 2014 here.

With the event only 3 months away and registration open you can now grab tickets at earlybird pricing. Earlybird price for the conference is 495 GBP (plus VAT), price will go up to 895 GBP (plus VAT) after July 31st. For my valued blog readers I obtained Lendit discount code wiseclerkvip – enter this voucher code on the payment page and you get a special 15% discount on the ticket price.

LendIt Europe will bring together the leaders and pioneers at the forefront of the p2p and online lending industry in Europe. In addition to the leading lending platforms, LendIt Europe is expected to draw institutional investors, financial analysts, private wealth managers, family offices, individual investors, and media representatives from across the globe.

LendIt Europe 2015 will be a two day event with the second day in partnership with the UK P2P Finance Association (P2PFA). Agenda, speakers, and sponsors will be announced in the coming weeks.

The conference at the Hilton Metropole Hotel will feature keynotes from the CEOs of the leading UK platforms, as well as interactive panel sessions with leaders from across Europe. There will also be a pre-conference cocktail party held the night before at the Landmark Hotel.

I am looking forward to LendIt London and hope to see you all there! For those of you who can’t make it – the event will be broadcasted live on the internet.

Lendit Europe 2015

Funding Empire Sells Majority Stake to Paratus AMC

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Funding Empire LogoFunding Empire, the P2P platform for SME business finance, has sold a majority stake to Paratus AMC, the Bracknell based residential mortgage servicer and lender.

Funding Empire will continue to be headquartered in Cardiff and is currently Wales’ only P2P lending platform.

Commenting on the deal, Parag Patel MD of Funding Empire: ‘We are delighted to welcome Paratus AMC as a partner and majority shareholder. Their team, mature back office functions, strong balance sheet and proven ability in managing secured assets on a large scale presents us with a unique opportunity to create a market leading business in the dynamic P2P lending market. With the backing of Paratus AMC, we are now best placed to accelerate the development of Funding Empire and build on the solid foundation the team has worked relentlessly to create over the past few years. We are currently working on the launch of some new and exciting products without compromising our reputation for taking a very thorough, transparent and customer-centric approach to doing business.’ Continue reading →

Sage Partners with Funding Circle and MarketInvoice

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Sage, the business software and services provider, announced two partnerships that will help SMEs unlock the UK’s growing alternative finance industry, which was worth 1.74 billion GBP in 2014.

Integrating with one of Europe’s peer-to-peer business lenders for short term finance, MarketInvoice, Sage’s flagship small business accounting package – Sage 50 Accounts – now enables small businesses across the UK and Ireland to apply for business-critical funds more quickly and easily than ever before.

Working with Funding Circle, an marketplace for business loans, Sage aims to help even more businesses across the country understand how they can borrow all important growth capital between 5,000 GBP and 1 million GBP (and up to 3 million GBP for property finance) in days not months.

‘Sage has been at the forefront of payment and funding innovation for years, and alternative finance is no exception,’ said Lee Perkins, EVP and UKI Managing Director for Sage Group plc. ‘Sage Pay already provides a key piece of the business growth puzzle, and when it comes to small business accounting, Sage 50 Accounts offers the deepest and broadest hybrid accounting capabilities on the market. By partnering with MarketInvoice and Funding Circle, we’re giving Small & Medium Businesses in the UK the ability to swiftly and easily apply for additional funding to support their business development and growth.”

Lack of finance remains a critical issue for UK companies, with almost 40 per cent stating it holds them back from growing, according to UK Bond Network. Whether they need to invest in stock, new premises, product development, or even cover day-to-day costs, alternative finance can provide faster, more convenient lending than traditional sources. Marketplace lending platforms have provided over 2.1bn GBP  in funds to UK small businesses in recent years.

James Meekings, co-founder of Funding Circle, said: ‘The Funding Circle marketplace is currently the fifth largest net lender to small businesses in the UK, in just under five years. But there’s still a long way to go – many small business owners remain unaware of the choice they now have when looking for finance. Partnering with Sage will allow us to grow awareness and trust, bringing more competition and efficiency to the small business lending market.’ Continue reading →