Fellow Finance expands into Sweden

Leading Finnish peer-to-peer lender Fellow Finance has expanded into Sweden with the launch of a new consumer lending product.

Its investors, who hail from 50 countries globally, will be able to invest in the new Swedish loans right from the off. Fellow Finance already offers both consumer and business loans across Finland, Poland and Germany.

According to AltFi Data, the firm is the largest P2P platform by cumulative output in the Nordics, with over €270m lent to date. Over €75m has been lent via the platform in 2018 alone.

“We are thrilled to be in the Swedish market as our expansion to Sweden is a natural part of our strategy to become the leading crowdfunding and crowdlending platform in Europe. We see a great potential in Sweden and are happy to introduce the benefits of peer to peer lending for borrowers as well as for investors,” said Fellow Finance CEO Jouni Hintikka in a statement.

Firms must be authorised as Payment Institutions to operate a crowdlending or crowdfunding platform in Sweden. Fellow Finance is licensed as a Payment Institution by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, which it says allows it to operate 'cross-border from Finland to Sweden' within the EU and EEA. It is also signed up to the register of supervised companies (Företagsregistret) of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen).