2015: a Groundbreaking Year for SME Funding

2014 has been a good year for the alternative finance industry. It has helped thousands of businesses access finance in a transparent way that connects them with hundreds of potential stakeholders. With the £2bn lent mark smashed back in the autumn, 2015 promises to be a year of greater choice and volume for SME finance and here are a few reasons why:

• Election year should mean there is greater political pressure on lenders to prioritise business lending. It has always been a popular message, and while the Coalition can point to its record of supporting AltFi, Labour may have to promise more support to win votes.

• Banks will be forced to refer customers to alternative lenders. The finer details of this are being worked out now, including the dominant referral website, but it will give SMEs useful signposting when looking for funding and raise the profile of online lenders.

• More businesses are utilising cloud accounting. This allows lenders to plug in to their accounts and make a better judgement of the business’ ability to repay finance, making them more attractive to lenders. We wholeheartedly support this modern way of operating!

• General awareness of alternative finance is only going to increase. The influx of ISA cash at some point in 2015 will lead to a new wave of media interest, while platforms are increasingly attracting venture capital investment which will manifest into more consumer marketing, predominantly on the TV, transport network and online. There will be no escaping AltFi in 2015…

• The entrepreneurial spirit of alternative finance means new niches will be tapped. Where businesses might previously have been ruled out because of poor credit, a lack of track record or through operating in an undesirable sector, it is inevitable that some platforms will cater for this market with lenders happy to take on the risk in return for a higher yield.

It’s also a fantastic time to get a loan through rebuildingsociety’s ever-increasing lending community. Start your application now

Summary of our NISA Consultation Response

rebuildingsociety responded to the recent Treasury consultation on peer-to-peer loans falling under ISA wrappers. We’ll keep you posted on the outcome of the consultation – ultimately we’re delighted that we’ve reached this stage so quickly and with the tax breaks for losses on p2p loans recently announced in the Autumn Statement, the case for investing in UK businesses is becoming even more compelling.

Here is a summary of our sentiment and response:

– We believe p2p platforms should have a secondary market to facilitate liquidity, although we don’t believe it is practical to enforce ‘guaranteed sale timescales’, as it is an open market. (more…)

Autumn Statement 2014: Bad Debt Protection for Lenders

People who lend money through peer-to-peer  lenders will be protected from bad debt by new policies introduced in Wednesday’s Autumn Statement.

In an effort to make the UK a more attractive place for financial technology companies, the government revealed a plan to support P2P lending and crowdfunding platforms through a package of measures designed to remove regulatory and tax obstacles.

These include a new bad debt relief for lending through P2P platforms – allowing lenders to write off bad debt in a similar way to banks. This is something that has been lobbied for since rebuildingsociety first started, so we’re delighted about this. It makes investing much more efficient and we’ll be looking at ways to change our statements to reflect it.

Autumn Statement: Business stands to win

There was a positive response from the business industry to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. Chiefly, the promise to look at the unpopular business rate system chimed with business owners and commentators, including the FSB.

“The FSB is delighted to see the double small business rate relief remain for another year and a full review of the outdated business rates system, something we’ve long argued for,” says its chairman John Allan.

National Insurance is set to be abolished for apprentices too. Mr Osborne said: “When a business is giving a young person a chance in life we’re going to support them not tax them.” In order to avoid the 50%+ youth unemployment rates in other countries across Europe, this feels like a sensible step. More could probably be done to align the education system to the future needs of the economy though, in industries like digital.

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rebuildingsociety Annouces Raft of Partner Arrangements

If 2014 was the year of regulation for the peer-to-peer industry, then 2015 will surely be the year of scale and third party involvement.

In the past couple of months the interest from third parties in aggregating our anonymous lending data or introducing borrowers or investors has noticeably taken off, which is great news for us and our stakeholders as it will mean awareness is raised in the markets that need it most – like the SME market.

They will also be sourcing news from around the alternative finance market, so fantastic resources for everyone.

Some of our partners include:

4th Way

Nurture Money

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• Quick Stats:

  Invested Lenders:	1917
  Avg. Investment:	15k
  Funded Loans:	863
  Total funds lent:	£42.4m
  Average net return:	12.8%
  	more stats