Secured lending doubles during fourth quarter of 2020
The secured loan market is heading back towards pre-pandemic levels after lending doubled during the final quarter of 2020, Loans Warehouse data shows.
The loans comparison website, which includes peer-to-peer lenders in some of its results, said the volume of secured loan finance doubled between the third and fourth quarter of 2020.
There was £66.8m of loans approved during December, down £13.4m on November.
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Average completion times have also dropped to 11 days.
Loans Warehouse predicted this would help the market return to pre-pandemic levels during the first quarter of 2021, helped by several lenders reducing their pricing.
“In a confident sign of how secured charge lending has adapted over the past 10 months, we can now confidently state it’s business as usual in lockdown three for all lenders who were active at the end of 2020 – including several who are even predicting growth at the start of 2021,” Matt Tristam, managing director of Loans Warehouse, said.
“Whilst this figure represents a month-on-month drop that is purely seasonal, as a percentage it is actually only two percentage points difference from the same time period in 2019, when neither social distancing or furlough were part of our vocabulary.”
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