Germany

Bitcoin Based P2P Lending Service Bitbond Raises 1.1M EUR Round

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Bitbond LogoSME lending platform Bitbond today announced the closing of an equity funding round of 1.1 million EUR. This round brings Bitbond’s raised equity capital to a total of 2.2 million EUR.

Led by mobilike founder Şekip Can Gökalp, a number of business angels contributed to the round. Among them were Fyber founders Janis Zech and Andreas Bodczek as well as Kreditech co-founder & CEO Alexander Graubner-Müller.

Bitbond will use the additional funds for further product development and to grow its user base in markets which are underserved by traditional lenders. Over 1,600 loans worth 1.2 million USD were originated on Bitbond since its launch. 76,000 users from 120 countries registered with the service to date.

Founder & CEO of Bitbond Radoslav Albrecht said: “The additional resources will help us to continue realizing our mission which is to make lending and borrowing globally accessible. We are happy to have such experienced investors supporting us on this exciting journey.” Albrecht contributed a guest article on bitcoin p2p lending in the past on P2P-Banking.

In October 2016 Bitbond received their own regulatory licence by German financial services supervisor BaFin. This makes the service one of the first and only regulated blockchain based financial services providers.

The startup from Berlin connects investors who look for above average fixed-income investment opportunities with small business owners who need a loan. To make global cross-border lending possible, the platform uses the bitcoin blockchain for payment processing. Continue reading →

International P2P Lending Volumes January 2017

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The following table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces in January. Funding Circle leads ahead of Zopa and Ratesetter. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 476 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 platforms.

Zopa celebrated passing 2 billion pounds in loans lent since launch. That figure means  300,000 loans to 246,000 borrowers funded by around 75,000 lenders. Jaidev Janardana, Zopa’s CEO, commented: “We’re excited to be the first UK peer-to-peer lender to pass the 2 billion GBP milestone. Over the last 12 years, we’re proud to say we’ve helped a third of a million people get better interest rates for both borrowing and lending. The 2 billion GBP milestone demonstrates how far we have come, but our journey is only just getting started. Our decision to launch a next generation bank reflects our mission to create better options for consumers and to shape the future of finance.”

Further milestones reached this month were:

  • Harmoney passes 500 million NZD since inception
  • Assetz Capital passes 200 million GBP since inception
  • Twino passes 100 million EUR since inception

Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of marketplaces open to international investors. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available.

P2P lending statistic 01/2017
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in January 2017. 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.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

Aegon to Invest 1.5 Billion EUR in Auxmoney Loans; Leads 15M Series E

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Dutch insurance company Aegon, international provider of life insurance, pensions and asset management, intensifies relationship with leading German p2p lending marketplace Auxmoney. Aegon plans to invest 1.5 bilion (!) Euro into p2p consumer loans issued by Auxmoney within the next 3 years. This is a stunning amount for institutional investments in the European p2p lending sector.

Aegon also leads the new 15 million Euro Series E funding round for Auxmoney. This financing round is being topped up by existing shareholders of Auxmoney.

Aegon the Netherlands, Eric Rutten, who will join the board of auxmoney, comments: “With innovations along the entire value chain of credit and its highly sophisticated and techdriven
methods of risk assessments and scoring, auxmoney is another strong case for Aegon to drive innovations in the financial industry for the benefit of society.”

Raffael Johnen, CEO and co-founder of auxmoney, says: “This investment is a strong signal for the entire FinTech industry in Europe and beyond. Through our efforts to provide capital to millions more people, we have emphatically made the case for a more inclusive financial system. Auxmoney is an impactful and sustainable FinTech leader in Europe, and we will continue to make a difference in the banking and finance landscape.”

Johnen continues: “Aegon’s funding commitment will enable auxmoney to onboard banks that are looking to expand and improve their loan offerings to clients through auxmoney’s
marketplace. We are looking forward to supporting more bank partners in serving their clients even better.“
Johnen adds: “When we first launched auxmoney, our vision was to empower customers who had no access to credit products. Today’s funding commitment from Aegon will enable
us to expand our offerings of highly competitive all-digital loans at all levels of the credit spectrum.”

The partnership between Aegon and Auxmoney started in 2015.

Auxmoney management

German P2P Lending Market – Short News

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We last reported on Lendico refocusing on SME loans instead of consumer loans in Germany. Sinces then there is more negative news. Sources say that Lendico was in talks with Spanish bank BBVA, but failed to close a financing deal. In December several employees left the company. Lendico said that these were normal fluctation and that the Lendico group has more than 100 employees.

Documents accessed by P2P-Banking.com show that the largest (by loan volume) German p2p lending marketplace Auxmoney made an operating loss of 13.1 million EUR in the year 2015 (compared to 8.48M loss in 2014). This was before receiving Series D funding in early 2016.

Funding Circle CE, Berlin, the German division of Funding Circle closed 2015 with an operating loss of 9.45 million EUR (compared to 2.83M loss in 2014).

Germany seems to be a very hard market for p2p lending companies to crack. Interest rate levels for consumer loans are very low compared to other markets. banks are competitive. And there is no significant amount of credit card debt that can be refinanced. P2P Lending marketplaces cannot offer better interest rates, they need to find other competitive advantages. And customer acquistion costs to win borrowers through online marketing channels are high in Germany.

While Lendico never published monthly origination volumes, Auxmoney and Funding Circle CE stopped making monthly figures available early in 2016. The latest publicly accessable figures were 10.6 million EUR new loan originations for Auxmoney in January 2016 (ranking in Top 6 of Europe’s marketplaces) and 0.8 million EUR for Funding Circle CE in June 2016.

German retail investor perception sentiment towards Lendico and Funding Circle CE is critical. Investors discuss whether Lendico is still active developing the business and rant (1,2) about information quality of the Funding Circle CE interface. Another sumup by a German investor on Funding Circle CE.

Funding Circle has said that it will use part of the funds of the recent 100M US$ round to consolidate its position. It will be interesting to see if this results in higher activity in Germany as they announced to concentrate their continental focus on the Netherlands and Germany while stopping to issue new loans in Spain.

International P2P Lending Volumes December 2016

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The following table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces in December. Funding Circle leads ahead of Ratesetter and Zopa. Lendix reports an all time record month. Saving Stream and Assetz Capital had a good month, too. Mintos crossed the milestone of 100 million EUR originated since inception. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 414 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 platforms.

Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of marketplaces open to international investors. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available.

P2P Lending Volume 12/2016
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in December 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.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

Lendico Quietly Stops Origination of New Consumer Loans in German Market

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Without any public announcement Lendico has stopped to originate new consumer loans in the German market sometime in the past weeks (months?). Instead it has embedded a loan application tool of Finanzcheck in the Lendico website and refers interested borrowers to this company. Lendico told inquiring investors that the company will focus on loans to businesses in Germany. As far as I know, Lendico has not published any recent figures on loan volume origination. On Dec. 7th, 2016 Rocket Internet SE published its financial report for the first half of 2016. There is a short mention that Rocket Internet SE has booked a ‘Wertminderungsaufwand’ (own translation: decline in value) of 19.482 million EUR for the corporate holding of Lendico.

Two months ago Lendico stopped issuing consumer loans in the Netherlands. Earlier the company stopped issuing new loans South Africa. The status of the Lendico operation in Austria seems unchanged to me – at least the website is unchanged and allows applications for consumer loans in Austria.

The only real visible development in the past months was the launch last week of the joint venture between Postfinance and Lendico in Switzerland.

UPDATED: An earlier version of this article had incorrect information about the status of Lendico Brazil