Peer-to-peer lending platform Lendable has raises $4m from a group of angel investors, including all three partners from VC Passion Capital.
All three, Eileen Burbidge, Robert Dighero, and Stefan Glaenzer, have invested personally and not through their firm. Other investors include Will Kirby, partner at Still Point Ventures, and Adam Knight, executive chairman of London-based bitcoin startup Coinfloor.
The investment follows US competitor Lending Club’s IPO in New York last week and is just the latest of a number of recent investments in the peer-to-peer lending sector.
Are you Lendable?
It is an increasingly crowded market and Lendable is just one of the many startups in the UK trying to crack it.
Lendable only launched in January 2014 but believes it has spotted a gap in the market that differentiates it from its competitors, a list that includes personal loan providers Zopa, Lending Works and RateSetter.
“The UK’s established P2P platforms for personal loans are all focused on creating a safe investment for retail savers,” explains Lendable. “Therefore, they can only fund borrowers with the highest credit scores, and long, spotless credit histories.”
Lendable’s platform delivers personalised rates as opposed to ‘ball park’ figures. This opens up the market to potentially riskier borrowers and more pro-risk lenders who want a better rate.
Follow-on investment
This is the second investment of 2014 for Lendable from some of the investors and Passion Capital partner Burbidge says its down to the company’s “impressive month on month traction”.
“As Lending Club demonstrates on a very big and public stage, the world of financial services and transactions is extremely lucrative and also in need of efficiencies, transparency and improved user experiences,” she explains.
“In that vein, all of us angel investors involved with Lendable are excited to back a uniquely qualified team given their previous ventures and successes.”