Funding Circle reviews all retail and hospitality offers
‘Big three’ peer-to-peer platform Funding Circle will review all of its retail and hospitality offers, business finance specialist Rangewell has found.
Rangewell’s latest Lender Pulse report has also revealed that the platform’s offers are now only valid for 14 days.
Meanwhile, Together Finance has paused new loan applications, but is continuing to pay out on loans that were commenced prior to the 23 March.
This has led to a high volume of borrowers contacting Rangewell looking for alternative lending arrangements.
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“We saw last week Together Finance stopped new loan applications,” said Josh Mendez, financial expert at Rangewell.
“This won’t be the first lender to leave the UK market. I suspect some lenders will be using this as a reason to pull out of a market they’d rather not be in.
“We have seen a squeeze on access to finance for firms in the retail and hospitality sector and there is no evidence that the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme will help those businesses who are most at risk gain finance.
“With many lending operations having been off-shored over the past decade we are now seeing delays in lead time go up due to lockdowns in countries like India at the same time as the increasing demand. This has put a lot of strain on the already under-manned UK teams.
“The government needs to ensure that otherwise healthy businesses in historically ‘difficult to borrow’ sectors like retail and hospitality don’t get passed over as lenders deal with an unprecedented level of borrower enquiries.”
Rangewell also noted that iwoca’s offers are now only valid for seven days and any offers made prior to 23 March are being manually reviewed.
The business finance lender has also informed Rangewell that, as a temporary measure, it will not be lending to any business that has had to close due to the government’s ‘social distancing’ measures.
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