Crowd2Fund eyes profitability after narrowing losses
Business lending platform Crowd2Fund narrowed its losses in the year ending 30 April 2020, and said it was on a “clear path to profitability”.
The firm made a loss of £855,136 last year, down from a loss of £996,659 the previous year, according to documents filed with Companies House.
In the peer-to-peer lender’s latest annual accounts, Chris Hancock (pictured), founder and chief executive of Crowd2Fund, said that the company was negatively impacted by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic between January 2020 and April 2020.
On 23 April 2020, Crowd2Fund paused new loan listings and its secondary market, in order to protect investors and prepare the platform for the post-crisis recovery. It reopened to new loans in October 2020 and announced that it would relaunch its secondary market in January.
Writing on behalf of the board, Hancock noted that the pandemic and Brexit had weighed on the business last year.
“The company continued to grow its investor and businesses base throughout the year, ensuring that the platform also improves its technical capability year-on-year,” Hancock wrote.
“Although the overall income dropped from the prior year, the company was able to reduce expenses considerably and so the overall loss was lower too. The company has a clear approach for the coming years, setting a clear path to profitability.
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“The drop was partly due to Covid-19 during the months of January 2020 to the year end in April 2020 where the business saw reduced trading due to disruption caused. It is also believed the at the uncertainty of Brexit also created a drag on the growth of the business.”
Hancock added that the platform’s default rates had been “much lower” than expected during the pandemic, and the company has “experienced significant growth” during the first quarter of 2021, as the economy began to reopen.
He predicted that the business will return to pre-Covid trading levels by the end of the year.
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