Connective Lending aims to lend £1m this year
Peer-to-peer pawnbroking platform Connective Lending aims to lend £1m by the end of the year, and is actively seeking new lenders as its loan applications grow.
The platform launched in February of this year, and offers loans secured against assets such as luxury watches. Co-founder Daniel Grimes has 24 years’ experience owning and running a chain of pawnbrokers, and he heads the platform’s personal asset lending division.
“We have tested our systems and filled a fair few loans now with forum investors and some organically found lenders,” said Grimes.
“We have ironed out any issues in our beta phase so feel we are now more prepared to look for new investors/lenders. This is also needed to help fill the loans that are coming through in coming weeks and months. We intend on offering some very attractive rates to all of our lenders, current and new, which will also help.”
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This is the first time that Connective Lending has actively sought out new lenders, which Grimes says reflects the opening up of the post-Covid economy.
“We would like to achieve the ability to lend up to £1m from a mix of retail sophisticated and other high net worth individuals as part of their mixed risk portfolios,” said Grimes.
“We are coming out of lockdown and the economy is opening meaning borrowers will be looking to raise funds for business opportunities and growth,” he added.
“As government aid is slowly withdrawn we are an ideal supplier of funds without the need of lengthy applications and without a marker on their credit histories.”
In a recent posting on the P2P Independent Forum, a spokesperson for Connective Lending said that “with the expectation of an increased loan feed we have recently began a new marketing campaign to steadily increase the number of lenders parallel to the new loans we introduce over the coming months.”
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The company also responded to queries around the high value of some of the watches on its platform, saying that certain brands of Swiss watches have increased in values over the years.
“This is due to limited supply which the brands will not change anytime soon,” Grimes said.
“Having been in this business for so long I have never seen a crash however values could stabilise and inflation could slowly catch up with those values so in my opinion as long as we keep loan-to-values (LTVs) at around the 70 per cent mark then the risk of loss is very low.”
