Loanpad aims to become profitable from Q2
Loanpad aims to break even and become profitable in the second quarter of this year, after its loanbook grew by 200 per cent year-on-year across 2020.
Louis Schwartz, founder and chief executive of the peer-to-peer bridging lender, said that the size of the platform’s loanbook increased from £6.5m at the end of 2019 to £18.25m at the end of 2020.
He said this was as a result of many new investors joining and existing investors increasing their investments.
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“2020 saw substantial growth for Loanpad, in the region of 200 per cent over the year,” said Schwartz.
“We are very happy with this and given the economic backdrop we hope to see similar levels of growth in 2021, as we believe our safety-first structure is very appealing to investors currently.
“We do not disclose profit and loss accounts, but we are now very close to break-even and expect to be profitable from the second quarter this year.
“This is simply down to the growth of the platform. As the loanbook grows so does our revenue although our costs remain relatively static. Our revenue now covers the vast majority of our costs and we expect will shortly exceed our costs in the coming months.
“We have been operating for two years now and no investor has lost a penny nor had any delays to withdrawing funds, so we feel we have earned investors’ trust to date but of course we are highly focused on maintaining that.”
Schwartz forecasted the property market to remain buoyant this year thanks to continued government intervention.
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“We are very confident that the government will do what is takes to ensure a strong and healthy property market,” he said.
“This may include an extension to the stamp duty holiday and/or various other measures.”
According to unaudited financial results on Companies House, from 2019 to 2020 Loanpad saw its net assets increase from £84,947 to £126,009 and retained earnings rise from £971,910 to £1.18m.
In November 2019, Loanpad said it was forecasting profitability by 2020, which it attributed to its focus on sustainability over “exponential early growth”.