Lending Works exits P2P lending

Founded in 2014, the business was fully acquired by asset manager Intrivia at the end of 2020 and has been increasingly focusing on institutional capital to fund its embedded lending in recent years.

Lending Works, one of the oldest UK peer-to-peer lending platforms, is exiting the retail funding market citing declining demand from investors made worse the pandemic.

Founded in 2014, the business was fully acquired by asset manager Intrivia at the end of 2020 and has been increasingly focusing on institutional capital to fund its embedded lending.

Nick Harding, CEO and founder of Lending Works, says the dynamics of the P2P market have changed markedly in recent years, with retail investor participation steadily waning. 

“This has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, to the extent that we no longer feel it is large enough to support a mainstream lender such as Lending Works. We now need to utilise alternative funding sources to ensure that we can provide our loan customers with the service they need,” he said. 

“As a result, we’ve decided to close our retail investor product and move into a “run-off” process.  

For investors, this means Lending Works will no longer be accepting new money from retail investors. Those who already have money invested in loan will continue to receive repayments from their loans until their balance is fully repaid, the firm says., 

“This is not a decision we’ve taken lightly. We’re grateful for the part that retail investors have played in helping us to build an exceptional lending platform over the last seven years,” he added. 

The news comes a week after rival Zopa, which invented the P2P lending concept, said it would be exiting the peer-to-peer lending process.

You can find out more on the run-off process here.