JustUs aiming to reopen secondary market in July
JustUs is planning to reopen its secondary market in July and is still in talks to become an accredited lender for the government’s emergency finance schemes.
The platform, which suspended its secondary market as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March, said it plans to reopen it next month if there are no new lockdown restrictions.
“We continue to liaise with British Business Bank to be an accredited lending platform for firms badly affected by Covid-19 and where we can help distribute desperately needed capital via our platform at cost and in the national interest,” Lee Birkett, founder of JustUs, said.
“We can confirm that we will not roll out any government guaranteed loan products, without substantial newly established platform liquidity commitments so as to ensure no detrimental impact to our existing lender returns and business model.
“We intend to open up our secondary market at the beginning of July subject to no further lockdown or economic shocks.”
An update to investors from the platform said its forbearance policy, limits on new loans and the secondary market suspension had helped keep loanbook performance “marginally below historic norms.”
The yield on the entire loanbook is currently 8.8 per cent.
Birkett has been a vocal critic of the limited number of alternative lenders that are accredited to provide coronavirus business interruption loans.
Funding Circle and Assetz Capital are the only P2P lenders to have been accredited so far although other alternative lenders such as MarketFinance and ThinCats have also been approved.
Read more: How P2P lenders can slot into government’s SME coronavirus support