Kuflink eyes £500m loan book amid structural changes
Kuflink is aiming to grow its loan book to between £350m and £500m within the next two years, as the property lender makes a series of structural changes designed to super-charge its expansion.
The peer-to-peer lending platform has made two new hires to its investor relations team, in order to take a more proactive approach towards investor feedback. Already, some usability changes have been enacted on the company’s website and app in response to suggestions from investors.
Four members of staff have also been promoted into more “strategic” roles. Paul Auger (pictured) has moved into the role of chief operating officer, after almost a year as Kuflink’s head of products. Gary Prince has been promoted to chief financial officer, from his former role as head of financial control. Laura Hetherington is now chief of staff and operations and Hiran Patel has been named chief risk officer, managing the entire risk team.
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Auger says that the company will be looking to make more senior hires in the future.
“We have made several promotions recently as well as increasing our head count,” says Auger. “In addition, we are also in the process of introducing a new loan origination and management system.”
Kuflink has partnered with a high-profile software provider to implement a new software package that is set to launch soon. This package will give Kuflink the ability to spend more time, effort and money on developing the P2P platform to make it more attractive to investors, Auger says.
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“Kuflink is privileged to be trusted by thousands of investors to be the custodians of their hard-earned money, and this is a responsibility we are taking very seriously,” adds Auger.
“We know that to attract further investment enabling us to increase our loan book we must continually look at the policies, processes and procedures that we adopt to ensure we are making prudent lending decisions to get the best outcome for the investors on our platform. In this computer age we have more insight and data available to us to assist in our lending decisions.”
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More than 26,000 investors are now registered with Kuflink, and the investor relations team reaches out to as many of these investors as they can to ensure that they are happy.
“We are actively selecting more and more people to make contact with,” says Auger.
“We’re attempting to contact every person that registers on the platform to make sure they are happy with the process and see if we can improve the onboarding journey.
“We are also learning more about the functionality they’d like from the platform.”
By prioritising investor feedback, Kuflink hopes to build on its substantial user base, and attract new investors.
More than £256m has been invested via the platform to date, across 936,472 different investment opportunities. Auger believes that the lender can double its business over the coming years by creating a seamless user journey which is compliant with all regulations and offers competitive rates to both retail and institutional investors, while helping borrowers seek out affordable funding.