LendingClub completes Radius acquisition
LendingClub has completed its acquisition of US digital lender Radius Bancorp.
At the end of last year LendingClub stopped offering retail peer-to-peer investment as it was moving towards becoming a bank holding company following an agreement to acquire Radius.
In October, the US peer-to-peer lending platform said that it has applied to the Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company after agreeing to acquire Radius in February in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $185m (£135.22m).
At the time the platform said it was planning on developing new products as a bank holding company, including a high-yield savings account that will be initially exclusively available to its existing retail investors.
Now following the completion of the deal with Radius, LendingClub said as it works to integrate with Radius, the day-to-day user experience for its members won’t change.
The platform said that members can still expect the same service and support and in the near future new products and services designed to find them savings.
Read more: LendingClub members prioritise personal loan repayments over credit cards
“This is a historic day for LendingClub and a true watershed moment for the industry,” the platform said in a blog post on its website.
“The move to digital-first banking is accelerating, and we are now positioned to capture that trend to grow our membership base, to more deeply engage with our existing three million members, and to help them keep more of what they earn and earn more on what they keep.
“By bringing together the unique assets of these two industry-leading businesses we can build on our history of improving the financial health of everyday Americans while significantly accelerating our growth trajectory.”
In December, LendingClub announced that it was “cautiously optimistic” about 2021 with investor returns recovering to pre-Covid levels.
This followed the platofmr suffering from the impact of the pandemic with loan originations falling by 90 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter.