The European platforms at the forefront of green lending
European peer-to-peer lending platforms have been at the forefront of green lending for several years now, and they continue to innovate.
From offering green financing loans to support sustainable business practices, to installing renewable energy in underprivileged communities, to partnering with carbon reduction firms, Europe’s crowdlending platforms are continuously innovating.
Here are just a few of the ways that European P2P lenders are helping to save the environment and turn investor portfolios green.
1. Offering green loans
Several European P2P lending platforms have already begun to offer green loans to their business clients in an effort to help fund the sustainability ambitions of the alternative lending sector.
Two months ago Amsterdam-based P2P platform Lender & Spender introduced a new loan product to finance sustainability measures, called the ‘Go Green’ loan. The loan allows clients to borrow money for the purpose of making sustainable improvements to their homes. Lender & Spender offered a discount of 0.5 per cent on their regular interest rates on theses loans.
And earlier this week, Dutch lender Collin Crowdfund teamed up with auto trade association BOVAG to offer green financing solutions to their clients. The loans aim to help entrepreneurs who want to make their company more sustainable but are stuck when it comes to financing.
The availability of green financing was brought into focus recently when an Iwoca survey found that the increased cost of doing business is preventing the UK’s 5.5m small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from going green.
2. Choosing green partners
HeavyFinance became the latest platform to choose an environmentally-friendly partner when it announced its collaboration with soil carbon measurement company Agricarbon earlier this month.
The deal is part of HeavyFinance’s plan to remove one gigaton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050.
Laimonas Noreika, founder of HeavyFinance said that the partnership will “champion the transition to regenerative farming, achieving greater ROI for investors and making best practices more accessible to farmers.
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3. Prioritising ESG-friendly investments
ESG-friendly investing has become increasingly important to European investors in recent years, and the continent’s crowdlending platforms are paying attention. A recent survey from Robo.cash found that more than half (52 per cent) of Europe’s P2P lending investors pay attention to ESG issues when choosing a new P2P platform.
Luckily, they won’t have to look too hard, as many of Europe’s P2P lenders have based their business models around naturally ESG-friendly industries such as social housing, agriculture funding, renewable energy, and sustainable business lending.
Read more: Over half of EU P2P investors prioritise ESG