Where do you go when the bank says no?

The following article is a guest post from Yann Murciano, CEO of Blend Network.

Since November 2016, as part of the Small Business Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, the UK’s nine major banks are legally required to refer those SMEs they refuse to finance to an alternative provider. The last figures published in August 2017 for the first nine months of the scheme were quite unimpressive: less than 3% of small businesses referred to alternative lenders via the bank referral scheme ^[1] were funded, that is some £4m in completed funding deals for the first nine months of the scheme. However, despite a sluggish start, we are now seeing an increase in conversion rates. Recent months have showed a significant pick-up in referrals, partly due to promotion of the scheme by the banks themselves. Of course, full effectiveness of the scheme will take time to achieve but if recent trends are something to go by, the trend looks encouraging. Read more “Where do you go when the bank says no?” →

New Offer: £100 Cashback with Kuflink

I had an email from Kuflink today with their latest new customer offer. They are offering £100 cashback for a minimum £200 investment.
Read more “New Offer: £100 Cashback with Kuflink” →

Collateral Goes Into Adminstration

The pawn-come-property secured lender Collateral has gone into administration. Read more “Collateral Goes Into Adminstration” →

Property Moose Suspending Secondary Market

Property Moose announced last week that they are suspending their secondary market at the end of the month, February 28th.

Read more “Property Moose Suspending Secondary Market” →

Lending Works rates rise to 6%

Lending Works are raising their rates from tomorrow (Monday 22nd Jan). The 3 year product will rise from 4.0% to 4.5%, and the 5 year from 5.5% to 6.0%. Read more “Lending Works rates rise to 6%” →

Assetz Capital launches IFISA

Assetz Capital, one of the UK’s largest P2P lending platforms with over £400 million lent out, have launched their IF ISA (Innovative Finance ISA). They are giving access to the same investment products offered to non-ISA accounts:

You can now invest in all of our automatic accounts tax-free, with investment into the Manual Lending Account (MLA) using your ISA allowance available in Q1 2018.

Read more “Assetz Capital launches IFISA” →

Trouble at Spain’s Largest P2P Lender

P2P-Banking and El Espanol have broken worrying news over the past couple of days. Comunitae, a large European peer to business lending platform, have detected internal fraud and are suspending activity – probably shutting down.

What Happened?

Comunitae is Spain’s largest P2P lender, and one of the largest Euro-SME lending platforms. Founded in 2008, they’ve raised over €3.5 million in external funding (for platform development). Data from Altfi shows an all time lend of around 45 million euros, 9 million of which was in the year to date.

At the start of November, Comunitae sent out a letter to its investors explaining that they had interally detected fraud affecting 18 guarantors. El Espanol explains that their own risk analyst was complicit in a form of payment fraud with various businesses. Comunitae state in their investor email that there are now criminal proceedings against the employee in question. Read more “Trouble at Spain’s Largest P2P Lender” →