The following chart lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces in September. This month I added Crowdestate. Funding Circle, Ratesetter and Zopa had a record month. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 424 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many countries. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services. Milestones in total volume originated since inception:
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in September 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. The Wellesley volume is 0 for this month – this may be a reporting error. *Prosper and Lending Club no longer publish origination data for the most recent month.
BLender, a p2p lending company from Israel, today announced its global expansion, beginning with new offices in Milan, Italy and Vilnius, Lithuania that will serve customers in Italy and the Baltics. The Israeli-based company delivers a P2P lending platform with a proprietary consumer credit rating system designed for territories without credit bureaus or traditional consumer credit information. BLender is a cloud-based platform that was built to work in a wide range of markets and languages.
In Italy the platform charges borrowers a 4.5% origination fee and investors 1.5% of each repayment (principal and repayment). Compared to other marketplaces these fees are in the higher price range. The fee for selling a loan on the secondary market is 0.45%.
BLender has experienced exponential growth since its launch in 2014 and has already provided approximately 12 million USD in loans. The company will continue expanding its global operations into territories that are craving consumer credit. In 2017, BLender plans to launch operations in Africa, Latin America and other European Union (EU) countries.
“Offering multi-national P2P lending has been our vision since BLender’s establishment,†said Dr. Gal Aviv, CEO, BLender. “Since our Israeli launch in 2014, we have built the foundation, infrastructure and technology to enable BLender to operate in the global market, so we will be able to face operating, cultural, technological, regulatory and taxation challenges.â€
With the expansion into Italy and the Baltics, BLender is enabling users to lend and/or borrow across countries, making financial borders a thing of a the past, says the service.
“BLender identified a credit gap in countries where the supply of consumer credit is insufficient for the populations’ needs and is priced very high, and a gap in other countries where the savings options have very low or even negative yield,†said David Blumberg, founder and managing partner, Blumberg Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that led BLender’s last funding round. “BLender’s multi-national lending options mediate this credit gap by creating a meeting ground between borrowers from countries that lack consumer credit, to lenders from countries where the yield on their savings in insufficient. We support and strongly believe in the vision, management capabilities and business potential of the BLender team.â€
Investors on the BLender platform will earn predicted interest rates of 5-6% annually. The safeguard fund acts as an additional layer of protection to the lenders in case of a default. BLender’s default rate is approximately 1% before activating the safeguard fund. Thanks to the SafeGuard fund, the effective default rate is 0% says the service. BLender also offers ReBlendTM, BLender’s secondary market that offers the lenders the option the trade their loan portfolios and enjoy liquidity.
Recently BLender was chosen to participate in the exclusive ELITE program of the UK Stock Exchange that finds and nurtures companies with the potential for an IPO. As part of the program, BLender receives the guidance of the program’s experts for two years that help promote the company’s activity.
Furthermore, the company was selected as one of the most promising Fin-Tech companies in the world for 2015 by the accounting firm – KPMG, and also by the United Kingdom Trade and Investment Department.
The multi-national expansion was done in collaboration with KPMG.
The European online alternative finance market, including crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending, grew by 92 per cent in 2015 to €5.431 billion, according to the results of the 2nd Annual European Alternative Finance Industry Survey conducted by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at University of Cambridge Judge Business School, in partnership with KPMG and supported by CME Group Foundation.
The report released today, titled “Sustaining Momentumâ€, had the support of 17 major European industry associations and research partners, and was based on data from 367 crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and other alternative finance intermediaries from 32 European countries – capturing an estimated 90 per cent of the visible market. P2P-Banking.com is one of the research partners.
The United Kingdom was by far the largest in Europe at €4.4 billion, followed by France at €319 million, Germany at €249 million and the Netherlands, €111 million. Other large European markets include Finland with €64 million, Spain at €50 million, Belgium at €37 million and Italy at €32 million. The Nordic countries collectively accounted for €104 million, while Central and Eastern European countries registered a total of €89 million.
Excluding the UK, the European alternative finance market grew by 72 per cent from €594 million in 2014 to €1.019 billion in 2015.
“Although the absolute year-on-year growth rate slowed by 10 per cent†(from the 82 per cent growth excluding the UK between 2013 and 2014) the industry is still sustaining momentum with substantive expansion in transaction volumes recorded across almost all online alternative finance models,†the report said.
Peer-to-peer consumer lending is the largest market segment of alternative finance, with €366 million in Europe in 2015. Peer-to-peer business lending is the second largest segment with €212 million, with equity-based crowdfunding in third with €159 million and reward-based crowdfunding fourth at €139 million.
Table: Figure 11, page 31 of ‘Sustaining Momentum’, volumes by market segment in Europe 2015 (outside UK)
Among other findings:
Estonia ranked first in Europe in alternative finance volume per capita at €24, followed by Finland at €12 and Monaco at €10 outside of the UK.
Online alternative business funding increased by 167 per cent year-on-year to €536 million raised for over 9,400 start-ups and SMEs across Europe.
Institutionalisation took off in mainland Europe in 2015, with 26 per cent of peer-to-peer consumer lending and 24 per cent of peer-to-peer business lending funded by institutions such as pension funds, mutual funds, asset management firms and banks.
Across Europe, perceptions of existing national regulations in alternative finance are divided. About 38 per cent of surveyed platforms felt their national regulations for crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending were adequate and appropriate, 28 per cent perceived their national regulations to be excessive, and a further 10 per cent said current regulations were too relaxed.
The biggest risks perceived by the alternative finance industry are increasing loan defaults or business failure rates, fraudulent activities or the collapse of platforms due to malpractice.
Chart: Figure 28, page 47 of ‘Sustaining Momentum’, risks to the industry as perceived by the polled platforms
Robert Wardrop, Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, said: “European alternative finance transaction volume increased to more than €5 billion in 2015, with volume outside of the UK market exceeding €1 billion for the first time. The European alternative finance industry is still small, however, and the slowing rate of growth during the year is a reminder of the risks the industry must contend with in order to transition from a start-up to a sustainable funding channel within the European financial services ecosystem.â€
Irene Pitter, Global Executive, Banking & Capital Markets and member of the FinTech Leadership Team at KPMG, said: “This report shows that the alternative finance sector is set to continue to grow and mature. 2016 marks a significant year for ‘alternative finance’ in Europe as the market demonstrates clear signs of continued strong growth and increased maturation in the sector as a whole. European activity, excluding the UK, showed solid growth of 72 percent last year and demonstrated client demand for alternative finance solutions even in the smaller EU countries.â€
Rumi Morales, Executive Director, CME Ventures, said: “The prominent feature of financial technology is that it is truly borderless. No one country is harnessing alternative financial markets or business models to the exclusion of any other. Rather, from the UK to Estonia and from Finland to Monaco, the entire European continent is experimenting and expanding upon innovations that can provide greater access to capital and financial services to more people than ever before.â€
The following chart lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces in August. Funding Circle leads ahead of Ratesetter and Zopa. Zopa yesterday announced an interest rate cut of 0.2% following the BoE decision to lower interest rates. Zopa warned that new deposits would be slower to lend out, and will take 10 days on average, as it faces a shortage of borrowers. Zopa used to accept 1 percent of applicants, but now approves on 20 percent.The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 336 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many countries. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in August 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.
Estateguru is a p2p lending marketplace in Estonia focussed on bridge loans to property developers in Estonia. Since the launch in 2014 Estateguru has facilitated a loan volume of more than 10 million Euro in a total of 65 loans. The loans are secured by 1st or 2nd rank mortgages. Typical interest rates range from about 9% to about 12%. Some of the loans pay monthly interest, while for others the interest is paid at the end of the loan term. The minimum bid amount is 50 Euro.
Estateguru provides appraisal reports for the security. Estonia is highly advanced in digitization – this allows Estateguru to provide direct links to the official records in the land register for the plot.
Example of an Estateguru loan listing (shortened, click to enlarge image). There is more information about the loan, the security and the borrower in the other tabs
I have invested in a couple of loans over the past years and the handling is smooth. Two loans are repaid (one early) and the other loans are running on schedule. Other investors report that there have been no defaults yet, only some loans where the payment came in late for a couple of days (or a few weeks at max.). Unlike other platforms, Estateguru sends no updates about the loans.
Many investors keep some cash in the Estateguru account in order not to miss out, when new loans appear. Smaller new loans usually fill within hours. Investors can opt for a notification email, that is sent when new loans arrive. However tiny loans (< 40,000 EUR) are sometimes 100% funded by the time the email arrives. There is no autoinvestment feature / prefunding facility. Estateguru does not have a secondary market, but many loans are only for 12 or 18 months term.
Estateguru is open for investors from all over Europe (actually the EEA). If you are inside the Eurozone investments are fast via SEPA transfers. If you live outside you should consider using Transferwise or Currencyfair to avoid high bank fees and get a better currency exchange rate.
Bonus: If you sign up using this link Estateguru will credit you 0.5% cashback on all investments you make in the first 90 days.
P2P lending marketplace Mintos crossed 50 million Euro in loans to both private individuals, as well as small and medium sized businesses after 18 months of operations. Mintos marketplace arranges loans from 14 non-bank lenders, which have joined the marketplace from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
According to funded loan volume, to date most money has flowed into loans in Latvia’s – 33%, Lithuania’s – 31% and Estonia’s – 23%.
‘All around the world, peer-to-peer lending concept is slowly replacing bank services from which the commercial banking sector is retreating. Today, banks no longer conduct the main mission of the financial system — connecting those postponing consumption with those who are consuming today, i.e. connecting savers and borrowers. Deposit rates are close to zero or even negative, while access to credit is limited. This increases the non-bank financial services market, which offers consumers easy, convenient and affordable services,’ emphasizes Mintos CEO and co-founder Martins Sulte, predicting that by year end, investors through Mintos will have financed EUR 100 million in loans. Continue reading →
