Revealed! The fastest growing P2P lending platforms by loanbook, investors and borrowers
THE latest Peer2Peer Finance Association (P2PFA) data shows some of the UK’s largest platforms are now lending more than £10.5bn, but how are they performing individually?
At a headline level, the P2PFA data, as of the end of March 2019, shows Funding Circle has the largest loanbook at more than £5bn and the most active lenders, while Zopa has the most borrowers.
But further analysis paints a different picture.
Loanbook
A P2P lending platform’s loanbook is often seen as a key sign of how active and attractive a P2P lending platform is.
Funding Circle’s business lending loanbook grew 46.2 per cent annually in the first quarter of 2019, the P2PFA data shows, but this is not the fastest rate.
Property lending platform Landbay recorded the highest annual growth, with lending up 168 per cent in the first quarter to £294m.
Zopa and Folk2Folk had the slowest growth at 22 per cent.
Investors
The first three months of the year coincided with ISA season and P2P platforms will have been making efforts to attract investors to their Innovative Finance ISAs (IFISA).
The P2PFA data shows the number of lenders that have lent at least £1 at the end of the quarter.
This means some users may no longer be active and could have withdrawn or temporarily paused lending.
Read more: MarketInvoice confirms departure from the P2PFA
The figures show Funding Circle has the most active users, up 7.5 per cent annually to 81,324.
But Lending Works actually had the largest growth in users, up 32 per cent to 5,581.
Two P2P platforms actually saw their lender base drop.
ThinCats recorded a 28.4 per cent fall to 1,659, while Zopa was down five per cent to 56,961.
Borrowers
P2P platforms can’t do much if there is no one to originate loans to.
The data shows the number of borrowers still with loans at the end of the quarter, so does not take account of those that have been repaid.
Based on this, Crowdstacker saw the biggest growth, up 71 per cent albeit to just 12 borrowers.
This was followed by Landbay, which was up 67 per cent to 754.
Zopa had the most active borrowers at the end of the quarter, at 238,145, which was up 13 per cent annually.
Funding Circle saw a slight 1.9 per cent drop in active borrowers to 49,117.
Read more: Three reasons why RateSetter should rejoin the P2PFA
