Assetz chief rules out purchase of FundingSecure loanbook

“P2P lending is an expensive and detailed business to run well,” he said. “It’s also now a highly regulated market which is good for investors with larger, well-funded platforms such as ourselves but makes things very difficult for under-resourced businesses.

“The smaller players are clearly struggling to keep up and the badly-run businesses are being scrutinised by the regulator. It has always been assumed that larger players like ourselves, RateSetter, Zopa and Funding Circle would buy up failing platforms but no-one needs a badly performing loan book to add to their own books.”

Law said that the industry now has “much tighter prudential standards and regulation to live up to” and predicted that there will be more consolidation as smaller players fall by the wayside.

While Law has ruled out an acquisition of FundingSecure’s loan book, it’s possible that the distressed assets will attract interest from elsewhere. As Peer2Peer Finance News reported earlier this year, the loan book of another collapsed P2P lender, Lendy, attracted multiple offers.

It emerged in October 2019 that FundingSecure had fallen into administration, leaving thousands of investors unsure about whether they will be able to recover their funds.

- January 8, 2020