P2P-Banking.com

London based Funding Circle has announced that it has raised 1.1 million US$ form undisclosed private investors and will launch it’s p2c lending service Fundingcircle.com in Q2 2010.

Director and co-founder James Meekings informed P2P-Banking.com:

When the platform launches later this year, people will lend small amounts to a range of different, creditworthy businesses to spread their risk. In turn, those businesses will be borrowing from a multitude of people to get a lower interest rate. … Funding Circle will also empower people to support their local community, by allowing lenders to target businesses with characteristics, such as locale, that are valued by them.

Small businesses will initially be able to apply for unsecured loans of 5,000 to 50,000 GBP. The businesses are checked for fraud and must meet a number of minimum credit requirements verified by the UK’s leading credit agency. Experienced underwriters then further analyse and screen businesses before allowing them onto the Funding Circle platform.

IsePankur, the Estonian P2P banking site, this recently added three innovations to their platform:

1. Loan auctions that end immediately when the loan request is 100 percent funded
2. Business accounts enabling Business-to-Business, Consumer-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer lending and borrowing
3. An arbitrage court that will be in charge of solving disagreements coming from the loans, incl. defaulting loans

isePankur decided to add a new auction type based on requests from the borrowers that allows the borrower to choose if the auctions ends after a set time period or when its fulfilled 100 per cent. The borrowers currently have an alternative to borrow from banks, pay-day loan companies or isePankur. The two former institutions provide the loan to the customer with-in 1 to 3 days from the application. Hence some of customers asked to implement a system by which they would be able to choose between a quick financing or a low interest rate in order for them to be more willing to use the peer-to-peer platform.

isePankur also launched an important new feature allowing legal entities to register, lend and borrow on the site. The maximum loan amounts (only for companies) have been increased to 150,000 EEK (approx. 13,175 US$), approx 15 times higher than the loan limit for individuals. There were three major reasons for the addition: (a) small companies lack financing opportunities as the banks have stopped providing credit whilst there are no official debt markets in Estonia; (b) companies with excess funds do not have simple investment opportunities that would provide them with returns of over 3-4 per cent per annum; and (c) there is a 0 per cent corporate tax in Estonia hence most of individuals with excess capital keep it in their companies’ accounts. isePankur aims to increase the loan volumes on the site multi-fold after the public and companies have had enough time to get familiar with the benefits provided by the business services.

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Bigcarrots.com wants to bring business and lenders together. Peculiar name, isn’t it? Images from Bugs Bunny cartoons floated on my mind. Positive indeed – but not at all related to finance.

Bigcarrots applies the concept of peer to peer lending to funding companies. Lenders can lend in chunks of 25 GBP, and a company can apply for unsecured loans of up to 25,000 GBP for 3 to 36 months loan terms. Lenders even have the possibility to exit early by reselling portfolios on a reseller platform.

The level of information provided on the website is low, the FAQ is short. For example their is no description how the risk assessment of applying companies is done by Bigcarrots. The About section gives little information on the background of Bigcarrots. I used the contact form to ask for more information, but did not receive an answer.

German startup Valuna.de wants to help companies to raise capital through loans from private investors without a bank. The first offer is by printing service QuickPrinter which offers 15 percent interest for a 7 year 100,000 Euro loan. Minimum amount for investors is 100 Euro. The platform Valuna offers marketing, but does not handle the financial transactions which are conducted directly between the lenders and the company. More information in an detailed article on the Valuna launch (German language). 

Spanish startup Partizipa.com does p2c lending instead of p2p lending. Individual investors can lend money together to fund a company. Currently a solar power plant in Andalucia is listed for funding. The amount to be raised is 285,000 Euro. Minimum individual investment is 5,000 Euro. The project advertises 13.85% ROI.

Earlier investors bought land in Bulgaria through Partizipa.

I did a short interview with Agustín Cárdenas, one of the founders of Partizipa:

P2P-Banking.com: Can you please describe Partizipa?

Agustín Cárdenas: Currently, we are offering P2C (person to company) lending, making it possible to invest small sums of money in big businesses. At the moment we are still developing the frame-work for P2P lending, and we hope we will be able to offer it sometime later this year. As of now, we cannot provide any further details. Our main aim is to build a community in which any given member presents a new idea for a business to the others for it to be enriched, completed and financed. If the business is successful, then every investor will share the profits according to his/her investment.

P2P-Banking.com: Who can invest? Only residents of Spain, or anybody?

Agustín Cárdenas: The only prerequisite to become a member of the community is to have a bank account in Spain under his/her name.

P2P-Banking.com: Does Partizipa administer and transfer the funds, or does it just
make contact between investor and business opportunity and both handle
the contract and the payment themselves?

Agustín Cárdenas: If the business is created by us, then it is us who manage the entire process up until the moment of completion and the sharing of profits. In any other case, even though we supervise all the process, we only put in contact the business originator and the investors.

P2P-Banking.com: When did you start the company?

Agustín Cárdenas: We are an extraordinarily young company. We have been operating only since September 2007. So far, our registered users have financed projects valued at 2.3 million Euro.