fundingcircle.com

Fundingcircle Raises £2.5 Million Funding From Index Ventures

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British Fundingcircle.com has announced the closing of £2.5m of Series A financing from Index Ventures, co-investors and existing shareholders.

Since Funding Circle launched in August 2010, more than 4,000 businesses and savers have signed up, with 11.5 million GBP offered to businesses to date. Currently, lenders have collectively earned 120,000 GBP in interest with average yields of 8.3% with access to their funds through Funding Circle’s secondary market. fee from lenders and 2% fee from borrowers. Yield is calculated before fees, tax deductions and bad debt. To date, no businesses have defaulted on loans and therefore no bad debt has been incurred by any lender.

Samir Desai, co-founder of Funding Circle, said: “We are delighted to welcome such a prominent and well respected investor as Index Ventures as a shareholder in Funding Circle.”

Fundingcircle’s First Month Figures

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Fundingcircle.com launched on Friday August, 13th. According to figures the company released, the p2c lending service had a good start. Apparently many lenders took advantage of the cashback offer, and immediately after lending sold loan parts to other lenders on the secondary market. Review the following numbers reported by Funding Circle:

  • 11 small businesses have fully accepted loans from Funding Circle lenders totalling 317,000 GBP
  • Funded businesses range from environmental consultancies and recyclers, to restaurants and retailers, and manufacturing and engineering companies
  • Over 1,000 lenders and borrowers have joined
  • 20 loan requests from small businesses have been listed on Funding Circle, with a good number of businesses in the credit underwriting process
  • Monthly interest rates for borrowers range from 7.4% to 10.7%
  • ~10,000 bids have been placed on loan requests
  • ~500 loan parts have been successfully transferred from one lender to another

Funding Circle (Fundingcircle.com) P2C Lending Launch in UK

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Funding Circle has launched it’s peer to company lending service in Britain. As reported by P2P-Banking.com in February the startup received 1.1 million US$. Any UK resident can lend either by individually selecting businesses or by using the autobid feature and spreading the investment over several matching businesses. While loans last for 1 to 3 years FundingCircle – unlike other p2p lending sites – allows lenders to access their money easily: Selling of parts of loans funded to other lenders is possible (secondary market).

In 2010 lenders are not charged any fees to use Funding Circle (in 2011 there will be a 1% annual servicing fee and a 1% sales fee).

All businesses applying for loans are screened by Funding Circle’s underwriters using data supplied by Experian to ensure they are creditworthy. A business may apply for a Funding Circle loan amount between 5,000 and 50,000 GBP. Continue reading →

Funding Circle Raises 1.1M to do P2C Lending

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London based Funding Circle has announced that it has raised 1.1 million US$ form undisclosed private investors and will launch it’s p2c lending service Fundingcircle.com in Q2 2010.

Director and co-founder James Meekings informed P2P-Banking.com:

When the platform launches later this year, people will lend small amounts to a range of different, creditworthy businesses to spread their risk. In turn, those businesses will be borrowing from a multitude of people to get a lower interest rate. … Funding Circle will also empower people to support their local community, by allowing lenders to target businesses with characteristics, such as locale, that are valued by them.

Small businesses will initially be able to apply for unsecured loans of 5,000 to 50,000 GBP. The businesses are checked for fraud and must meet a number of minimum credit requirements verified by the UK’s leading credit agency. Experienced underwriters then further analyse and screen businesses before allowing them onto the Funding Circle platform.