Sancus tightens credit processes amid no-deal Brexit fears

SANCUS BMS has prepared itself for a no-deal Brexit and tightened its credit processes to protect itself from a market slowdown, its chief executive has said.

Sancus BMS, which comprises the peer-to-peer lenders Sancus Finance and Sancus Funding, sent out an email to its community on Wednesday.

In the email, boss Andy Whelan noted that the past year had been “challenging, politically and economically” and predicted “more demanding times ahead”.

“As a business we have prepared ourselves as much as we can for the potential impact and uncertainty that a no-deal Brexit will create,” Whelan said. “However, it is obviously very difficult to predict where this whole unfortunate debacle will eventually unfold.”

He added that Sancus has “tightened further our credit processes to avoid the lending proposals that are reliant on bull market behaviour or activity.”

Despite macroeconomic concerns, Whelan highlighted Sancus’ achievements over 2018, which included expanding the business and introducing its asset-backed lending in Ireland, which he said offered “a great opportunity to deploy euros for our co-funders”.

Read more: Sancus BMS builds its Irish property finance team

“Sancus has come a long way over the past five years, starting with a small office of just three people in Jersey, we now have over 50 staff in seven offices across six jurisdictions,” he added. “I hope that we shall continue to show such solid growth over the coming years with my aim of having lent over £1bn by 2020.”

Sancus BMS has had a busy 2018, having undergone a major rebrand of its P2P platforms and securing a new £50m funding facility with Honeycomb Investment Trust.

The group has exceeded £800m of funding, with revenue growth up 42 per cent in the first half of the year.

Whelan was included in this year’s P2P Power 50, the definitive industry list of the most influential people in the UK’s peer-to-peer lending sector.