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Nick Moules talks at Knowledge Peers’ Exchange 2013
Knowledge Peers hosted an insightful event at the Oval on 28 November focussing on emerging trends in the alternative finance market for SMEs.
Based around research compiled by Knowledge Peers on the alternative finance market, the event attracted speakers from Market Invoice, ThinCats, Funding Circle, Asset Match, Funding Knight, Crowdcube, Seedrs and more.
Knowledge Peers’ research will be published in full in the coming weeks and we’ll link to it, but some headlines are:
Nick Moules says Help to Buy is a logical policy for stimulating the economy in the short term, but the cupboard full of gremlins could be full to bursting when it ends.
The furore surrounding help to buy is causing many to question the long term health of our economy, as well as the wisdom of inflating house prices. It’s a fact that there is a bubble growing, at least in London and the South East, regardless of what the MPs tell you.
A friend of mine was recently gazumped on a property in London. It’s a term we all heard regularly in the previous bubble and conjures images of would-be homeowners stretching to eight times income to land a mortgage on their dream home. We all know what happened next.
In this instance, an offer on a three bedroom house in East London was beaten by a better offer – it happens. After the weekend passed and determined to find an alternative, my friend found comparable properties in the area were now £10,000 more expensive. This meant at least another £2,500 to find, which isn’t impossible, but over a weekend is a bit galling. He hasn’t dared to look since and this was a month or so ago, but you can safely assume it will have increased.
The Leeds-based peer-to-business lending platform, rebuildingsociety.com, has appointed Rick Hyland as its new Business Development Manager for the Yorkshire region.
In the last two months rebuildingsociety.com has grown rapidly, advancing over £500,000 in loans in the period, with the platform’s average lender contributing over £3,000 to growing businesses. The average time between application and receiving a loan for successful businesses is down to 14 days.
Lending Club has recently attracted a $57m injection, valuing the business at a cool (or eye-watering) $2.3bn as it prepares for an initial public offering.
It’s the latest in a series of investments in p2p platforms both in the UK and US. Funding Knight recently received £1.5m for 20%, while Funding Circle continues to receive VC funding.
Banks and institutional investors are taking an increasing interest in the sector, which has made a profound impression on the business and personal finance markets.
With reform abound in the UK and US and more countries across the world getting to grips with the positive potential of the sector, now really is the time to get involved and become one of the early adopters.
Chris Ford with Nick Moules at UK Crowdfunding Day
Last Friday saw Dan and Nick attend UK Crowdfunding Day for a packed day of presentations covering all angles of the market, including peer-to-business lending.
While it has become clear that a split is forming in the market between the debt platforms and the rest, driven primarily by the early exchanges on the sector’s regulation, there is a lot to be said for improving awareness of raising cash for businesses or individuals over the internet, whatever the method. This conference certainly did that.
It was fantastic to see so many of our introducers at the inaugural Finance Professional Show on Wednesday. It felt very important to be seen at the show and to remind everyone of our growth and proposition.
The number of p2p platforms attending these events is steadily increasing and the ratio versus other finance providers is narrowing all the time.
New dashboard
We’re always busy improving the site to meet the needs of our lenders. Here’s a reminder of the latest releases and what’s coming up.
– Recently we’ve implemented a new dashboard for clearer reporting of your investments.
– We’ve also given you the option to manage your notifications. You can be emailed each time you’re outbid on an auction and whenever someone buys a micro loan from you, keeping your capital employed constantly. If it gets too much, you can switch them off from your settings options. (more…)
As Vince Cable’s long-awaited business bank makes its debut, pledging £45bn of funds to be lent to UK SMEs through two providers, he put the gap in funding down to several causes:
– A decline in bank lending
– Businesses outgrowing the support available from friends and family and struggling to win long term debt or equity finance
The second point is interesting because it implies a lack of people with a vested interest in supporting the business.
This is where a crowd of individual lenders can certainly help.