P2PFA member lending exceeds £10bn

PEER-TO-PEER Finance Association (P2PFA) platforms have cumulatively lent out more than £10bn, according to the trade body’s latest data.

The biggest growth came from lending to small businesses, the quarterly figures revealed.

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The nine P2PFA platform members are CrowdProperty, Crowdstacker, Folk2Folk, Funding Circle, Landbay, Lending Works, MarketInvoice, ThinCats and Zopa.

New loans originated by P2PFA members reached £934m in the third quarter of 2018, a drop from just over £1bn in the previous quarter.

Of this, £673m was lent to businesses and £261m to individuals, according to the data.

The value of outstanding loans stood at £3.3bn, of which £2bn was to businesses and £1.3bn to individuals.

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The number of borrowers stood at 281,479, with the vast majority – 234,483 – being individual borrowers. Meanwhile, there were 148,834 lenders in the third quarter of 2018.

The figures are not representative of the whole P2P lending industry as they do not take into account non-member platforms. This includes ‘big three’ lender RateSetter, which left the association last year after breaching its transparency rules.

In addition, they include just one quarter of lending data from CrowdProperty, which joined the P2PFA in July.

‘With this exciting milestone it is clear that the significance of the P2P lending sector’s contribution to the UK economy continues to grow in magnitude,” Robert Pettigrew, director of the P2PFA, said.

“Across the entire spectrum of small business, consumer and real estate lending, each billion facilitated by member platforms represents thousands of borrowers and investors helping each other achieve their goals – accessing the finance that they need or earning attractive returns.”