After a break in new investor inflows, Zopa has reopened to investors; the firm closed its platform to new investments at the beginning of December; cited an imbalance in borrower versus investor demand; firm is now accepting new investments with a 4.2 million British pound ($5.24 million) platform capacity. Source
Ranger Direct Lending Fund raised close to $20 million of the $50 million target it set out to raise through a placing of C shares; in 2015 the fund was looking to raise $169 million but pulled the offering and then raised $17 million; though the fundraise fell short, Numis Securities anticipated the Fund would have issues as the shares are trading at 5% discount. Source
RateSetter has hired Michael Hoare from PayPal as its new head of risk analytics and retail credit; Hoare was previously the chief credit risk officer at PayPal UK and also has experience at Capital One; Hoare and the risk management team will report to RateSetter's risk committee chairman as the company continues to build its risk team following the departure of Chief Risk Officer Cyrille Sallé de Chou who left RateSetter after six months for a chief risk officer role within HSBC's European retail business. Source
A survey from TWINO and KPMG provides statistics on alternative lending market trends in Europe; says UK alternative lending volumes are four times higher than the rest of Europe; consumer loans account for 72% of online lending in Europe; the European online alternative lending market has grown by 23% since the end of 2015, reaching lending volume of 600 million euros ($623.39 million) as of September 30, 2016; UK has 81% of market share; geographic location across Europe is becoming less of a factor as advanced technologies are the main driver for platform success. Source
Chirag Shah, CEO of Nucleus Commercial Finance, believes poor underwriting standards by UK P2P platforms will begin manifesting itself in 2017 and more platforms will begin to fail; in an interview with Business Insider he says: "Everyone's done the easy part of building the loan books. Now let's see who can get the money back."; Shah also points out that the big platforms in the UK own most of the quality loan volume, second and third tier platforms are underwriting borrowers who were rejected by banks or the large platforms; Conrad Ford of Funding Options thinks Shah makes good points though he doesn't think there is a systemic underwriting problem across the market. Source
According to data from AltFi, the UK has reported a new record high for alternative loan origination volume; loan origination volume in the UK surpassed 100 million British pounds ($123.53 million) in November; previous high was in November 2015; numerous UK marketplace lending platforms have reported record high origination volume in November including Assetz Capital and Funding Circle. Source
Marketplace lender LendInvest has launched a new auction finance product to more rapidly service its customers; the firm offers short term property financing; the auction financing product will service brokers and their clients who are seeking funding for properties bought from a real estate auction; the auction product will offer one to 12 month term loans ranging from 75,000 British pounds ($92,775) to 7.5 million British pounds ($9.28 million); LendInvest has originated over 800 million British pounds ($990 million) in loans over the last three years and also recently introduced a development exit product in October. Source
RateSetter has sold non-performing debt to debt purchaser 1st Credit; source says the sale was for 2.1 million British pounds ($2.6 million) of non-performing loans originated between 2010 and 2015; the sale goes beyond the company's standard plans for default collection and coverage which include support from one of the industry's most well-known provision funds; the RateSetter Provision Fund promises to cover defaults for borrowers and is valued at approximately 22 million British pounds ($27.2 million); with expected losses of approximately 19 million British pounds ($23.5 million) it currently has a coverage ratio of 118%. Source
UK marketplace lender Landbay has been granted full authorization by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); the platform primarily lends to borrowers seeking rental property mortgage loans; with the FCA authorization the Landbay platform can now seek to offer innovative finance individual savings accounts to its investors. Source
The Victory Park Capital Specialty Lending Fund has sold its Funding Circle loans; as of October 31, the Funding Circle loans accounted for 7.7% of the portfolio's net asset value; the sale follows the company's announcement to reallocate its portfolio to more of a balance sheet strategy. Source
