MoneyThing faces shortage of borrowers

MONEYTHING is focusing on growing its borrower base over the next 12 months as it says it is overfunded.

The peer-to-peer business lender, which is headquartered in London but has an office in the Isle of Man, has lent out £38m since its launch in February 2015.

It offers investors secured loans with average annual returns of 12 per cent.

Read more: New referral scheme gives P2P lenders access to more borrowers          

Sophie Pearce, head of business development, said that the company had grown more quickly than they had expected and now has over 2,300 lenders.

“The biggest challenge has been growing our borrower base,” she said. “We have always been overfunded, so our focus over the next 12 months will be finding borrowers.

“We’re currently developing our borrower strategy. We have some partnerships with brokers and lenders so I expect we will look to secure more of those.”

Attracting borrowers is not just a challenge for MoneyThing. In December, the UK’s oldest and largest P2P platform Zopa stopped accepting new money from retail investors because of a declining demand for loans.

Read more: Zopa re-opens to new investors

MoneyThing was spun out of Capital Mortgages Direct, a financial services company that aimed to help clients cut the amount of interest they paid on their mortgages. After the recession, the firm branched out into the bridging finance sector and subsequently led to the launch of MoneyThing.