funding

Credit Suisse NEXT Investors Leads 165M US$ Investment Round in Prosper Marketplace

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Prosper Marketplace, Prosper Logowhich operates a privately held p2p lending marketplace, today announced a 165 million US$ Series D financing, led by Credit Suisse NEXT Investors, part of Credit Suisse Asset Management. Additional participants included J.P. Morgan Asset Management, SunTrust Banks, a subsidiary of USAA, BBVA Ventures (BBVA’s representative office in San Francisco), Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds, Passport Capital, Breyer Capital, and others. The latest funding will support the company’s continued growth, expansion, and development of a national brand as it builds new products and services for the marketplace’s borrowers and investors. This round put the valuation of the company at roughly 1.87 billion US$.

The funding comes on the heels of a record quarter, with nearly 600 million US$ in loans originated through the Prosper platform, up 200% from the year ago quarter. The significant growth is a true indication of the increasing mainstream acceptance of marketplace lending.

“This investment is a testament to the efforts of our entire team in changing how people experience access to credit,” said Aaron Vermut, chief executive officer at Prosper Marketplace. “The explosion of interest in P2P lending demonstrates that a shift is in progress in the way that consumers borrow and lend. This new funding will help us scale the business to meet this growing awareness and demand.” Continue reading →

LendingRobot Raises 3M from Runa Capital

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Seattle based Lending Robot, a 3rd party tool for investors to automate bidding on Lending Club and Prosper has raised 3 million US$ form Moscow based VC Runa Capital. The founders Gilad Golan and Emmanuel Marot had initially created a solution to automate their own investments on Lending Club. The growing needs to automate such investments convinced them to develop this further in the publicly available service Lending Robot. Lending Robot is free for the first 10K managed investment and beyond that charges users a small yearly fee. To comply with regulation, Lending Robot registered with SEC as an Investment Advisor.

The main advantage of the service is that it bids for investors a high speed. This is crucial because bidding on Prosper and Lending Club is very competitive and the most sought loans are filled very fast.

Finexkap Raises 22.5M to Launch French Online Working Capital Financing Platform

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Finexkap, has completed a 22.5 million US$ fundraising, comprising 7.5 million US$  in Series A equity funding and 15 million US$ to finance the company’s lending operations.

Finexkap is a French working capital financing platform to purchase SMEs’ receivables on the web through refinancing vehicles managed by Finexkap AM, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Finexkap. The platform provides a market-disruptive short-term funding solution to entrepreneurs needing fast access to financing, and the company plans to use the Series A cash injection to scale up its data and product operations, increase its marketing efforts and make additional strategic recruitments. The company will use the 15 million US$ of commitments secured for its refinancing vehicle to fund the first batch of receivables.

GLI Finance invested 4.1 million US$ in July 2014 as part of the Series A funding round and now has a 26.44% equity stake in the company following completion of the overall fundraising. Other investors include Finsight, a globally focused Fintech investment fund which includes partner, and former COO and Board Member of LendingClub, John Donovan, as well as Fintech private investors and family offices. Since its inception, Finexkap has been advised in its financial strategy and fundraising by Luc Hardy of Sagax, an early investor in and advisor of, LendingClub.

In France, the acquisition on a regular basis of non-matured receivables is a credit activity which only licensed credit institutions can carry out. After extensive and collaborative regulatory review processes with the French Financial Markets Authority (“AMF”) and necessary legal structuring, Finexkap AM  has just secured a licence which allows refinancing vehicles managed by Finexkap AM to buy non-matured receivables and, consequently, operate throughout the European Union and in other states party to the European Economic Area agreement. Continue reading →