Lendermarket’s year of change
It has been approximately 12 months since Carles Federico took over the reins at Lendermarket, and a lot has changed since then.
Earlier this year the Dublin-based peer-to-peer lending platform underwent something of a rebrand with the launch of Lendermarket 2.0, which streamlined the investment process for the platform’s users and improved transparency for investors.
The P2P marketplace has also added new loan originators and signalled its intention to onboard even more lenders in the near future. Meanwhile, the company has been able to maintain its zero capital loss record thanks to its buyback guarantee scheme; while offering annual returns of between 15 and 18 per cent.
But Federico won’t take all the credit for the platform’s recent success.
“Everyone at Lendermarket is super committed, very investor-oriented,” says Federico.
“It’s been easy to onboard in a company where everyone is so committed and so looking forward for the same goal.
“Sometimes you arrive to a company and you have to modify half of it because it’s not valid. But not in this case – Lendermarket has an amazing team.”
Before joining Lendermarket, Federico was an active P2P investor himself, as well as a seasoned fintech professional. He had already identified Lendermarket as one of the more innovative platforms in the European P2P market, even before the changes of the past year.
“I believe in anything that is innovative and that is changing the physical into the online,” he explains.
However, in order to be truly innovative you can’t stand still, and Federico has big plans to work on Lendermarket’s growth and development in the years ahead. He is currently hiring new IT professionals to further streamline and improve the online investor experience, and he is searching for new loan originators from around the world in order to give investors more options.
“Everything is shifting towards more customer-oriented goals,” he says.
“Our growth is going to be based on diversification. I feel that at the moment we need more loan originators, so people have more choice on where to invest their funds.”
These new loan originators could be based anywhere in the world, although Federico is particularly keen to expand into the Latin American market. The platform currently works with originators in Mexico and Colombia, as well as originators based in Africa and Europe.
In the year ahead, Federico would like to continue to add new products, improve the customer experience and remain competitive in the ever-changing European market.
“In the last few years, the P2P industry has grown a lot,” says Federico.
“There is much more competition. That’s something that you can feel, that there is a bigger base of operators, but at the same time, we also have a lot of interest from investors.
“I would say that the competition is growing, but interest in our products is also growing so it all equals out.”
Under Federico’s leadership, Lendermarket is poised to take an even larger share of the P2P market, by continuing to prioritise the customer experience and offer even more lending opportunities.