Revealed! The CBILS P2P lenders that are still open for retail investors
The latest accreditation update from the British Business Bank has taken the number of peer-to-peer lenders offering coronavirus business interruption loans (CBILS) to four, but what does this mean for existing investors?
Funding Circle, Assetz Capital, LendingCrowd and Folk2Folk are all now accredited to offer CBILS.
This has created a quandary for each platform as CBILS finance has to be funded by institutions rather than retail investors.
In some cases, this has meant pausing retail lending.
Here is how the four P2P CBILS lenders are dealing with the retail investor side of their business.
Funding Circle was the first P2P lender to become accredited.
It is offering CBILS finance of up to £250,000 and is focusing solely on these loans so is not currently open to new investors.
Existing investors are still earning interest on their loans.
Assetz Capital followed Funding Circle in getting accredited.
It will offer loans of between £250,000 and £5m backed by institutional funding.
The platform is also set to reopen to retail investors this month and will back non-CBILS finance.
LendingCrowd and Folk2Folk were the latest to get accreditation this week.
Borrowers will be able to access loans of between £50,001 and £250,000 with LendingCrowd.
The Edinburgh-based platform will only be focusing on CBILS so retail investors will not be able to fund any new loans although the secondary market remains open.
A spokesperson said this was due to demand mainly coming for CBILS rather than other type of lending from borrowers.
Folk2Folk will provide loans of £50,001 and £5m under CBILS but has also said it will remain open for retail investors to fund its standard business finance product.