LendingCrowd to seek VC funding as lending triples
LENDINGCROWD is gearing up to secure venture capital funding in the next 12 months after its lending almost tripled in the first half of 2018.
The peer-to-peer lender for small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) said it lent £14m in the first six months of 2018, up from £5m over the same period last year.
It follows a hat-trick of record months for lending in April, May and June and chief executive Stuart Lunn said figures were boosted by its £2.75m partneship deal with Scottish Enterprise’s investment arm.
Lunn said the company is on track to scale significantly in 2018 and 2019 and intends to seek Series A funding over the next 12 months.
Activity during the second quarter of 2018 reached an all-time high for the P2P platform, with lending of £8.8m marking a 225 per cent increase on the £2.7m delivered in the second quarter of last year.
“We’re extremely pleased with the progress made during the first half, with 150 SMEs thinking outside the bank by choosing us as their funding partner, Lunn said.
“We’re also encouraged by the traction we’re gaining in the Scottish marketplace and we’re confident that, with greater awareness and engagement from the adviser community, we’re in a strong position to significantly ramp up our Scottish presence in the next 18 months.”
Lunn said the partnership with the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) had supported 75 Scottish companies.
“The deal with SIB was groundbreaking and only possible as a result of innovative, forward-thinking by SIB in their aim to assist Scottish SMEs that have been starved of growth capital by traditional lenders,” he said.
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