UK

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 →

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes June 2015

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The following table lists the loan originations for June. Most p2p lending services grew in June. I do monitor development of p2p lending figures 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 markets with no or limited choice of local p2p lending services can check this list of marketplaces open to international investors.
P2P Lending Volume 06/2015
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in June 2015. 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 monthNotice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

Who Owns Top UK Crowdfunding Platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs?

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Thanks to Companies House filings of British Companies are available to the public fee-free now (previously there was a small fee to access documents). This is a huge plus for equity crowdfunding as interested investors can check past filings of the pitching companies (provided the company was not founded very recently).

This also allows anybody interested to check how many shares the founders, employees and investors of the top UK equity crowdfunding platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs hold. And in order to save you the time to search yourself, P2P-Banking.com provides the direct links to the documents below:

Crowdcube

Seedrs

Both companies had pitches in the past for themselves, offering part of their equity on their platforms to interested investors.

Continue reading →

Ratesetter Changes Bidding Mechanism

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Ratesetter LogoThe way bidding works at p2p lending service Ratesetter will change on June 24th. Ratesetter informed investors

Currently your money is re-invested at the higher of “Your Rate” (i.e. the rate you have specified) or “Market Rate” (i.e. the rate that is worked out daily at RateSetter looking at the whole market). Once re-set to Market Rate it stays at that rate which resulted in some scenarios where your money could be sitting at Market Rate unmatched when in actual fact your specified rate was lower.

From 24th June, your money will simply be put on the market to be re-invested at your specified rate. Simple as that.

It is worth saying that if the highest borrower bid at the time of your re-investment is higher than your specified rate, your money will be matched at that rate.

So, we hope that you can now use the “Your Rate” functionality to better control the rate at which you re-invest. One way of looking at it is that is like a floor – you will get at least your rate, or the best borrower bid if that is higher.

There has been some discussion among investors what this means and what actually changes for investors. The way I interpret it (but I am not even a Ratesetter investor) is that the market rate will become less important as Ratesetter could advice the borrower at what rate his loan request would match instantly. Since many investors will not micro-manage their set rate and only login occasionally it will lead to a broader distribution of interest rates set as ‘Your Rate’ and thereby reduce volatility. E.g. should interest rates move upward on the market (for whatever reason), unchanged ‘Your Rates’ at lower levels from earlier times will delay and slow the rise (provided they have unused cash from repayments in their accounts).
But let’s hear opinion of actual Ratesetter investors in the comments, please!