German p2p lending service Lendico announced yesterday that an unnamed international hedge fund and 2 german banks will invest over 100 million Euro in loans on the Lendico marketplaces. The management sees that as a mark of confidence. Lendico is committed to increase activities in its growing core markets and plans to expand the product into SME loans.

Repositioning in some markets

In Spain, Poland and South Africa the quality of loan requests did not meet Lendico’s expectation. In Spain for example only 2% of all loan request were approved. As a result, starting next week Lendico will no longer offer loans from these countries to retail investors and only fund them via institutional investors. This also means that the cross border lending in Spanish loans that was available to German investors on the German platform will cease to be offered. Lendico will also centralise more activities in the Berlin bureau and close the offices in Johannesburg and Madrid. In the course of this restructuring around 20 employees are dismissed.