LendInvest has broken the £500m lending barrier since its launch three years ago.
LendInvest has broken the £500m lending barrier since its launch three years ago.
In the first week of the New Year LendInvest completed a £5m loan in London to take its lending to entrepreneurs who buy, build and renovate property across the UK to £501m.
Since launching in May 2013 more than 10% of all UK peer-to-peer loans have passed across the LendInvest platform. LendInvest now lends over £22m a month and funded more than 1,200 new or rebuilt houses in the last year alone.
Christian Faes, co-founder and chief executive of LendInvest, said £1bn of lending is a realistic target before the end of 2016.
He said: “Online lending and short-term property finance are sectors that are hugely compatible. Thanks to this great combination, LendInvest has become a company that has scaled at pace while also being a profitable business.
“Non-bank lending is starting to win serious attention from short-term borrowers and their brokers who can see how well it works for them. It is faster, more flexible and more straight-forward than what’s gone before.
“Just as crucially though, we are filling a funding gap where many traditional banks simply cannot venture because of capital constraints or legacy issues from the financial crisis.”
He added: “With our technology built, our team in place and customer confidence in online lending soaring, 2016 will be a year of even greater scale and ambition.
“Hitting the £1bn landmark could be within our grasp before the year is out.”
In 2015 LendInvest received the P2P industry’s first European credit rating and secured the UK’s largest ever FinTech Series A round – a £22m equity investment by a listed Chinese technology company.
Ian Thomas, co-founder and director, said: “Extending our share of the mortgage market is a priority in 2016.
“We are excited by the response from borrowers and brokers to our new development finance product that launched in December and is driving greater application volumes already.”
