Monthly origination volume dipped in August with the Liberum AltFi Volume Index UK rising by a mere £213m, down 16% from last month’s record breaking figure. Growth against August 2014 was 62%, only slightly down from July’s y-o-y growth of 66%, indicating that the cause for the dip was likely seasonal. The slowdown in activity appears to have been evenly spread across almost every platform. Only two platforms, Lending Works and Funding Secure, set new platform records, in contrast to the usual 5 to 6 platforms that we see setting records in a normal month.
To put August’s volume into context, however, it is still the fourth biggest volume month on record, surpassing all months before May this year. The chart above illustrates the step change in origination volume that was seen in July, this currently looks like an outlier rather than a trend. Our feeling is that July’s volume was not an outlier, but we’ll only really know whether that’s correct when we see how the September and October volumes pan out.
In addition to UK industry year to date volume surpassing 2014’s total, August also saw the top three platforms, Funding Circle,Zopa and RateSetter perform the same feat. Zopa’s year to date volume moved ahead of RateSetter’s for the first time since mid 2014, with £318m of lending vs RateSetter’s £317m. Funding Circle is close behind at £314m. A table of the top ten 2015 originator’s is shown below.
Rank
Platform
2015 Year to Date Origination Volume
1
Zopa
318,060,903
2
RateSetter
316,931,926
3
Funding Circle
314,046,540
4
LendInvest
195,445,465
5
Market Invoice
172,106,572
6
Wellesley & Co.
112,858,286
7
Crowdcube
45,896,678
8
ThinCats
36,162,000
9
Saving Stream
34,429,500
10
Folk 2 Folk
25,979,400
Liberum AltFi Volume Index
1,691,051,823
