Funding Circle hits £2bn milestone

Funding Circle became the second UK peer-to-peer lender to hit the £2bn milestone yesterday, as research showed that the sector had a strong start to the year.

Funding Circle’s UK division has now lent £2bn to small businesses, the platform said on its Twitter account on Monday.

The platform, which also has operations in the US, Germany and the Netherlands, has experienced stratospheric growth over the past year, lending out £820m in the UK in 2016.

Globally, its investors lent more than £1.1bn in 2016, with approximately £400m lent in the fourth quarter alone, a record amount for any small-and medium-sized enterprise (SME) direct lending platform.

The platform announced in January that it had received £82m in fresh equity investment after a record fourth quarter in which it saw 90 per cent year-on-year growth.

Zopa was the first P2P platform to lend out £2bn. The consumer lender announced on 30 January that it had hit the milestone, originating more than £703m in loans over the past year alone.

The other ‘big three’ platform RateSetter is also getting closer to the £2bn mark; as of Monday afternoon, it had lent out more than £1.7bn.

Funding Circle’s announcement follows research from P2P aggregator OFF3R, which shows that the wider sector had a strong start to the year.

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Source: Funding Circle hits £2bn milestone | Peer2Peer Finance News