Montello was the business that originally incubated LendInvest – with both of the businesses co-owned by Christian Faes and Ian Thomas. Montello – which has over £120 million in funds under management – will now invest directly into LendInvest in order to purchase whole loans originated by the platform. LendInvest is currently working to improve its platform technology in order to better service institutional investors, and the platform is in advanced talks with two third-party institutions that are looking to follow Montello’s example.
Christian Faes, Managing Director of Montello, commented:
“In many respects we have been selling ourselves short. We are one of the largest short-term mortgage lenders in the UK, and yet we have only been running a very small amount of loans through LendInvest. We now intend to increase our loan origination, directly through the LendInvest platform, and this will consolidate our position as one of the main P2P platforms in the world - both in terms of volume, and in terms of the quality of the loans that we are able to originate.
“As the ‘marketplace lending’ model evolves, it is important that platforms like LendInvest, are able to cater to individual investors through to larger institutions. This re-arrangement, will mean that Montello will now be one of what will be many, institutions investing through LendInvest.”
This latest development comes shortly after LendInvest’s cumulative lending counter jumped suddenly from £44 million to £67 million last Friday. We initially suspected that the £23 million boost came courtesy of the new arrangement with Montello, but LendInvest representatives suggested that this was not in fact the case. Nonetheless, the influx of institutional capital going forward could result in soaring volumes – the challenge now will be sourcing enough borrowers to keep up with investor demand.
