Lendermarket investors earn €10m in interest
Lendermarket’s investors have earned more than €10m (£8.83m) to date, the company has revealed.
By March 2023, the Dublin-based peer-to-peer lending marketplace had facilitated €310m in loans, with zero losses to date. It is now eyeing an expansion of its business model as it actively seeks to onboard new loan originators, including UK-based P2P lenders.
“We are working on a number of opportunities to list the loans of new loan originators on our platform to give our investors further diversification and choice as to the products on our platform,” said Lendermarket’s head of finance Conor Gibney (pictured).
“We would like to grow the number of different loan originators on the platform significantly.
“This will allow us to offer a wider range of options for our investors to assess and hopefully benefit from.”
Read more: Lendermarket platform value hit €29m in 2021
The platform is open to investors from across Europe and the UK, and its largest investor markets are Germany, Spain and Bulgaria.
The P2P lending platform was founded in 2019 and aims to provide a unique investment opportunity to investors whilst solving lending companies’ funding issues.
“Typically, the ability of global lending companies to raise capital to fund their operations has been challenging,” said Gibney.
“Similarly, retail investors have not had the opportunity to invest in higher interest-rate debt products such as bonds to lending companies.
“Lendermarket connects these lenders with investors providing a solution that meets the demand at both the investment and the funding end of the spectrum.”
Gibney added that the company’s priority is to maintain its track record of zero losses, while ensuring that only the highest quality loans are listed on the platform. He said that they would also like to “grow the volume of investments on our platform and become one of the largest and best P2P lending platforms in Europe and also globally.”
Read more: Lendermarket seeks new loan originators
Lendermarket currently works with four loan originators – Peru’s CrediFace and Nigeria’s QuickCheck, as well as Estonia’s Credory and CreditStar Group. These four originators specialise in consumer and business loans, with target interest rates for investors ranging from eight per cent to 16 per cent, depending on the loan.
Gibney has predicted that there will be “significant growth” in the European P2P lending market in the coming years, despite ongoing economic turmoil.
“The European P2P lending market is a huge opportunity and we forecast significant growth in the area due to the unique solution that P2P lending provides for lending companies and investors alike,” Gibney said.
“However, there are macroeconomic headwinds that are certainly impacting the market in general. Increasing interest rates is challenging as they are putting pressure on lending companies and they will likely result in competition for P2P lending investment products rising.”
Recently, a number of European P2P lending platforms have lowered their target investor rates due to stricter regulation. Last year, Lendermarket’s investors earned an average annual return of 14.4 per cent, and the platform is currently targeting average investor returns of 15 per cent.
Read more: Lendermarket increases Creditstar returns to 18pc