Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The UK marketplace lender Funding Circle has lent v£1.5 billion to the British business.
According to a post in the crowdfunding platform’s blog, this happens six years after Funding Circle launched in 2010 and nine months after it reached the £1 billion milestone.
So far the platform has lent funds to 16 000 businesses across the UK, mostly small and mid-sized – bakeries, doggy day care centers, craft beer breweries, shops, residential care homes, etc. This created 40 000 jobs, build approximately 2 200 family homes and boost the country’s economy by £2.7 billion, as per a report of the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
Funding Circle consists of over 50 000 lenders, including individuals, financial organizations, the European Investment Bank, the UK government, local councils and a university.
Funding Circle was founded in 2010 and so far has raised nearly $300 million of equity capital from global investors like Accel Partners, Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, DST Global, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital, Temasek and Union Square Ventures.
According to its own statistics, the marketplace lender is the 5th largest net lender to small businesses in UK in Q4 2015, and has been in the top 5 for the last 2 years. Businesses can borrow up to £1 million, and up to £3 million for property finance. The average loan amount is £60 000 and the average size of investor portfolio is £8 000. Since the launch of Funding Circle in 2010, has been earned £95 million of net interest.
Besides UK, Funding Circle has operations in the US (since October 2013), Germany, Spain and the Netherlands – all since October 2015. Globally, investors have lent more than $2.5 billion to around 20,000 businesses.
The UK is among the largest single markets for alternative finance in the world. According to a Cambridge University report, in 2015 it had a total volume of £3.2 billion, up 84% from the previous year.
