Funding Circle praised for coronavirus response as pandemic deepens
Funding Circle has been praised for its coronavirus response as the alternative finance industry starts to feel the impact of recent economic tensions.
Business finance provider Rangewell said that Funding Circle has been a “poster child” for alternative lenders thanks to its handling of recent investor panic.
The coronavirus pandemic and fear of the virus played a part in a huge drop in the FTSE earlier this week, which platforms reassured investors did not affect them.
However, with coronavirus uncertainty and the virus spreading, some peer-to-peer platforms have started to report increased requests for withdrawals and business loans.
Read more: P2P platforms vow to help SMEs amid coronavirus concerns
“We’ve had a number of our partners asking ‘is Funding Circle still lending’ given the recent decline in the share price,” a post on Rangewell’s website said.
“We can safely say from experience over the last couple of days that they are very much still lending, their systems remain best in class and their credit and support teams were replying to emails as late as 9.32pm last night.
“To date, Funding Circle has been the poster child of the new lenders in terms of dealing with such a fast-changing situation.
“Interestingly Funding Circle has told us that they have picked up business from other lenders who haven’t had the credit knowledge, systems or staffing to deal quickly with loan requests over the past few days.”
According to Rangewell, MarketFinance, previously known as MarketInvoice, has temporarily paused its business loan product to all food, hospitality, travel, transport, supply chain and freight sectors.
However, the platform is still supporting these sectors and others via its invoice finance and contract finance facilities as well as with its corporate solutions for larger businesses.
MarketFinance told Peer2Peer Finance News it notified commercial finance brokers earlier this week of the change as it respects their need to manage their client expectations and be able to quickly arrange finance for them.
The platform added it remains committed to supporting the UK’s small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their finance needs.
MarketFinance wasn’t the only platform experiencing the effect of the coronavirus this week.
RateSetter has informed its investors that withdrawals are taking longer because of a spike in demand, which it said could be because people want to withdraw their money following stock market losses amid coronavirus uncertainty.
And Assetz Capital has paused withdrawals from its popular Access Account, attributing this to concerns around the coronavirus.