Fellow Finance shuts down P2P lending arm to focus on banking
Fellow Finance has announced plans to close its peer-to-peer lending business.
The Finnish lender had merged with Evli Bank last year to create Fellow Bank.
The platform announced this week that it will cease intermediating new P2P and crowdfunded loans.
From the beginning of April, customers will be offered a possibility to sell their loan portfolios to Fellow Bank and to open an interest-bearing bank accounts and fixed term deposit accounts, the announcement said.
Fellow Bank is aiming to be a digital bank focusing on serving private and business clients while also offering attracting savings products.
The brand has also expanded into the buy-now-pay-later market.
The payment method, Fellow Lasku, gives consumers an option to make an online purchase with a 30-day interest-free invoice or in flexible monthly instalments.
The platform said the option is available on thousands of websites in Finland through the Visma Pay Online Payment Service.
Fellow Finance uses its data sources and machine-learning credit scoring models previously used for its P2P loans to assess and approve users wanting to use the buy-now-pay-later option.
It comes just a week after Funding Circle announced its exit from retail P2P lending in the UK.
The platform will instead focus on areas such as embedded finance.
The world’s oldest P2P lender Zopa has also closed its P2P lending arm to focus on its banking brand.