Zopa lends £100m in one month
ZOPA has become the first consumer peer-to-peer lending platform to lend out £100m in one month.
It lent £100m to borrowers in November, a 48 per cent year-on-year increase.
In total, Zopa lent out £900m in 2017 up to the end of November.
The platform said the increase in lending volumes has partly been driven by its integration with price comparison websites.
Zopa expects to hit £3bn of lending in January 2018, after becoming the first peer-to-peer lender to reach £2bn in lending in January 2017.
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Jaidev Janardana, Zopa’s chief executive (pictured), said the figures show UK consumers are looking for simpler and fairer loan products.
“We are very pleased to see that we are reaching even more people with our competitive rates and great customer experience without compromising our prudent lending criteria,” he added.
The rise in lending volumes will be promising news for new customers looking to invest through Zopa, as the platform currently has a waiting list to avoid a lender/borrower imbalance. More lending could pave the way for Zopa to open its products to new investors, including its Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA), which it launched in June.
In August, Zopa announced that it was scaling back its higher-risk lending due to the UK’s worsening consumer credit outlook. It also said that it was expecting slightly higher losses on its existing loans and an increase in early repayments from borrowers.