Funding Circle still offers manual lending in other markets
FUNDING Circle is still offering investors the option to self-select their loans in its three overseas markets, its annual report revealed last month.
The peer-to-peer business lender scrapped its manual lending option in the UK in 2017, saying that its auto-invest product ensures better diversification.
“We want to ensure investors lending through Funding Circle have an equal chance of accessing all loans, and earn the best possible return,” the company said at the time.
In its first annual report – a prerequisite of being a listed company – Funding Circle said that “all institutional and retail investors, with the exception of retail investors in Germany and the Netherlands and accredited investors in the US, invest passively through our platform.”
Read more: Platforms shift to auto-lending as demand for diversification rises
A Funding Circle spokesperson said that the disparity was simply because the UK is its most mature market.
“A passive-only approach is the most suitable for our UK product due to the size and scale of the platform,” the spokesperson added.
“For example, we have 79,000 retail investors in the UK compared to 8,600 in the Netherlands and Germany combined.”
Read more: How do you invest yours? The P2P platforms offering auto-bid or manual lending
This article featured in the May issue of Peer2Peer Finance News, now available to read online.