EstateGuru’s UK arm eyes €17m funding target for 2022
EstateGuru’s UK office has set a funding target of €17m (£14.37m) this year as it sets out to “seriously challenge some of the major players here”.
The European peer-to-peer lending platform launched in the UK in March with an office in Manchester and another in London on the horizon.
Speaking at an EstateGuru webinar today, Ross Gandy, country manager for the platform in the UK, said the team is aiming to finance over €17m in loans this year and to “seriously challenge” some of the country’s biggest players.
He said the UK business has already had some “really good discussions” with developers and “fantastic conversations” with institutions.
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“This year we’ve been setting certain targets for the team and we’re looking to finance over €17m and from my personal perspective we’re looking to seriously challenge some of the major players in the UK and in the year one growth looking to challenge or outperform them,” said Gandy.
“We’re looking at the overall perspective, we’re having some really good discussions with developers in the UK. We’re on track to have a very successful year in the UK.
“We’re having some fantastic conversations with some institutions and some of the responses we’ve had back from them are very positive. They want to invest in property-backed short-term loans and want to move investments into fintech, proptech.”
Mihkel Stamm, chief operating officer of EstateGuru, said that after a “great” 2021 in which the platform financed around €200m, it has signed a contact with the European Investment Fund this year and is targeting global expansion.
He said the platform is in the process of moving its second headquarters to Berlin and plans to create a single ecosystem by continually launching in new countries each year.
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“All of these changes are helping us step-by-step to become a global force for real estate lending,” said Stamm.
“To create this cross-border business of value to borrowers and lenders to build the one single ecosystem, for that we need to go step-by-step to new countries. We see we can go to one or two new countries a year and the long-term vision is as many as possible, it’s about choosing the countries next.
“The logic is it’d be wise to start off by first covering the biggest markets, there’s the biggest gain there. To get to this situation a lot of pre-work is needed, analysing the market, setting up local partnerships, adjusting legals to be complaint and to suit local regulators.
“This is the growth that might take longer. Some countries you can open-up quicker and some takes a longer time. We have a team preparing the countries in parallel and then we choose one or two countries to go to now.”
