Unbolted borrower seeks investor details for legal claim
A SECOND case has emerged of a disgruntled peer-to-peer borrower threatening legal action against investors and the platform.
P2P pawnbroking platform Unbolted has been embroiled in a legal dispute with a defaulted borrower, who has requested the names and contact details of all the individual investors funding his loan.
This follows legal action launched last year by a Lendy borrower against individual investors and may set a worrying precedent for the industry.
An email from Unbolted to its investors, seen by Peer2Peer Finance News, said one of its borrowers with overdue loans has started legal proceedings against the platform, alleging technical legal breaches about loans arranged for him.
The platform has denied these allegations and said it had agreed with the borrower to suspend enforcement proceedings against his defaulted loans whilst the matter is resolved with him.
“The latest position is that the borrower has not served his detailed ‘particulars of claim’ which is a legal document necessary for him to progress his claim,” Unbolted said.
“He has asked for more time to do this pending a dispute we have with him where he is seeking disclosure of the names and contact details of all the individual lenders to him.
“Our view is this is not necessary for him to progress his claim.
“In our view he is trying to worry lenders unnecessarily in order to leverage his claims against our platform.
“The court will rule on this point as a preliminary issue before his claim proceeds further.”
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Last October it emerged that a Lendy borrower was threatening to sue both the platform and its investors for £10m, claiming Lendy unfairly put £8.2m-worth of loans into default, according to email correspondence seen by Peer2Peer Finance News.
This resulted in the unusual step of details of individual investors being disclosed to the borrower in the event of a claim being pursued.
Unbolted has not responded to requests for comment.
