Lendio Ploughs Ahead

Small business lending portal Lendio has unveiled its 2015 results, headlined by over $128m of funding facilitated.

Lendio plugs small businesses in need of funding into the best of the US alternative lending scene – as well as into traditional financing solutions – through a smooth and intuitive portal. The platform raised $20.5m in a Series C led by Napier Park’s Financial Partners Group in March last year. Lendio has a partnership in place with leading office supplier Staples, offering swift access to credit to its millions of SME customers.

The c. $128m that was facilitated by the Lendio platform in 2015 served to fund a grand total of 5,136 businesses. The c. $128m of funding matched represents a 1,034% growth on the previous year, during which a little over $12m in business finance was facilitated.

Other aggregator platforms in the US – like Bizfi and The Business Backer – operate in the same kind of space as Lendio, but make use of their own balance sheets as a means of funding loans, alongside external lenders. 75 different affiliate lending entities were used to finance loans through the Lendio platform in 2015.

Some quick-fire facts from Lendio's past year:

• 8.9 days was the average time taken to close a loan, with the fastest loan closing in a mere 57 minutes.
• $25k was the platform's average loan size.
• 57% of businesses returned to the portal for additional financing.

There's plenty more data available in the infographic below – data relating to borrower creditworthiness, top industries served, and so on.

The UK’s leading referral platforms will doubtless be busy taking notes. The implementation of the mandatory referral scheme continues to drag out. In the mean time it feels as though the UK-based referral portals are somewhat struggling to build up momentum. If anything, the background presence of the referral-scheme-to-be seems to have somewhat stymied the independent growth of the referrals space. Not so in the States, however, where Lendio and a flock of other platforms are making clear headway – and becoming an increasingly important part of the alternative finance ecosystem. Bearing that in mind, might the likes of Lendio one day look to UK shores?