Auxmoney buys stake in Lender & Spender
German consumer lender Auxmoney has acquired a majority stake in Dutch peer-to-peer lending platform Lender & Spender for an undisclosed sum.
The two firms had already entered into a funding partnership in June 2022. Since then, Lender & Spender said it has more than quintupled its new loan volumes.
Lender & Spender will remain based in Amsterdam and will continue to operate under its own name in the Dutch market, according to a blog post on Lender & Spender’s website.
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Robert Leclercq, chief executive and co-founder of Lender & Spender said that the platform is very much looking forward to the next phase of the partnership. He added that he sees opportunities for further growth in the Dutch market, by combining smart technology, customer-oriented processes and competitive financing.
Boudewijn Dierick, managing director at Auxmoney, noted Lender & Spender’s successful growth over the past year and said that he looked forward to the two firms working together on further expansion plans.
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Lender & Spender was founded in 2015, has 32 employees and facilitates around €200m (£171m) a year in consumer loans.
Auxmoney, which no longer accepts retail money, has lent out more than €4bn to date. In February this year, it placed its third and largest secured bond on the capital markets.
The “Fortuna Consumer Loan ABS 2023-1” has securitized around 48,000 loans worth €350m (£311m), according to Auxmoney.
The bond follows a €225m placing in May 2022, which followed its first deal in September 2021 for a package of 30,000 loans worth a total of €250m.
Auxmoney claims that the first transaction was one of the first of its kind in Europe to include securities externally certified as social bonds.