Tag Archives: P2P

LFP162 – The Past and Future of Fintech w/Vinoth Jayakumar Partner Draper Esprit

Draper Esprit are one of London’s longer-established VCs and with investments in the likes of Revolut, Transferwise, Thought Machine, Seedrs, Crowdcube and Freetrade might know a thing or two about Fintech. Draper Esprit, like Augmentum who we had on the show last year are also a listed AIM and thus also can offer finance not tied to the cycle of underlying funds – the so-called patient capital model.

Vinoth not only leads Fintech investments at Draper Esprit but has had a long running interest in the sector being at a Zopa Party in around 2007/2008 long before almost every firm now on the scene existed.

In this episode he picks out the key developments in Fintech over the past decade and a half, some of the takeaway lessons that all businesses can implement, some of the challenges and ends with his prospects for the upcoming decade.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

LFP145 – New Year Special! 2020 Hindsight – A Decade In Fintech

In this show we review a decade in Fintech. Although the earliest Fintechs were formed around 2004/5 (WorldFirst, Zopa) many big names formed around 2010 (Funding Circle, Ratesetter, MarketInvoice). The LFP formed started covering the scene in mid-2014, the year of the first London Fintech week and the year that the Fintech word first hit the broadsheets. Using the shownotes at the time as a diary I trace the evolution of the promises, the hopes, the disappointments, the old innovations and the new innovations. Where did it all go?

No long show notes this week – it is a podcast podcast and in listening you can draw your own conclusions – indeed that’s the point of using dozens of real world examples as seen at the time not as seen through the dark glass of memory.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the London Fintech scene and wider UK Fintech scene and to all listeners. Want to know what the next decade might hold? Check out the previous decade and join the dots…!

LFP143 – Results From Analysing A Decades Profitability Data On One Hundred UK Fintechs w/Michael Pearson

Michael conducts the most in-depth analysis of Companies House data on UK Fintechs that I am aware of. That earlier this year he partnered with KPMG and Google on his Fintech Funding and Financing study says a lot. So what can we learn from a decades’s data on UK Fintechs?

Well first that only five are making a profit!

Michael recently updated his study which includes nearly one hundred Fintechs.

In this episode we focus on trends in profitability – which are not all as you might expect – although the report covers many more parameters especially around fund-raisings.

After a decade for the longest running Fintechs we should be able to start to draw conclusions. What are they?

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP132 Property Project Finance & Is P2P Becoming Asset Securitisation For Institutions?

Britain needs both megabuilds but also a specialised SME property project finance market. Mike Bristow CEO of CrowdProperty a P2P based in Birmingham offers (to both sides) development finance loans and improves risk-returns by disintermediating the SME property finance market. We also debate whether P2P itself is morphing into asset securitisation for institutions (and to an extent retail funds as most folks are too busy/uninformed to second-guess experts by attempting to cherry-pick.)

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LFP130 – Equity Crowdfunding – Past, Present and Future Innovations w/Jeff Lynn Exec Chairman Seedrs

Ten years ago Jeff and his co-founder came up with the idea for Equity Crowdfunding and seven years ago Seedrs became the UK’s (world’s?) first regulated Equity Crowdfunder. In this episode we revisit the origins of the concept, what it was thought to be then and how it has evolved with the person who can surely lay claim to be the father of UK equity crowdfunding.

As often everything takes time to evolve and build out. But ten years in much has been achieved – and not only much for Seedrs but importantly for the hundreds of companies who have raised vital capital on the platform. In the world of the now much forgotten “supply-side reforms” there is arguably nothing better that can be done for SmallCos than to have such an effective conduit to raising funds.

One thing that has taken time to evolve is for the rest of the world to catch-up with the UK’s lead. However as we shall hear there are promises that Equity Crowdfunding will finally become a Thing across Europe so plenty of exciting times ahead as well as behind.

These topics and much more are discussed in the show: Continue reading

LFP121 – Litigation Crowdfunding w/Cormac Leech CEO Axiafunder

Creativity springs eternal. Here is yet another new topic, one that no one could have imagined even a couple of decades ago. Litigation crowdfunding gives litigants a new source of funding and investors a totally new investable asset with non-correlated returns. Cormac Leech CEO and co-founder of Axiafunder walks us through this complex landscape.

Litigation Crowdfunding investment is definitely not for the unsophisticated. Barristers rarely assess even the best of cases as having more than ~75% chance of success such are the vagaries of the legal process. Vice versa though, for reasons we shall come onto, investment returns are super-normal and a portfolio of well-managed litigation crowdfunding loans has the possibility of very high returns indeed.

Cormac was last on the show some three years ago, appropriately talking about innovating in P2P. Well here he is having done that big-time.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading

LFP117 – Specialisation & P2P Retail vs Institutional Funding w/John Goodall CEO Landbay

How are the changing tides and winds in newFS vs oldFS lending? How are the incumbents and newbies doing? How is the balance of institutional funding of P2P and retail going? What’s the best way to succeed? When does accepting institutional funds turn into just being a front-end for oldFS?

Landbay only do buy-to-let mortgages and since their first loan four years ago have done nearly one thousand loans with a total lent of over £200m and an astonishing 0% loss rate which is a tribute to their strict credit criteria (average LTV 70%) as well as operational efficiency.

They recently won the 2018 Best Buy-To-Let lender of the Year award ahead of Barclays, Lloyds and – well – all others 😀

They were also placed #20 in Deloitte’s Fast Tech 50

 

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

LFP112 – FCA Proposes Undemocratisation: Taking the “P” Out of P2P with Ryan Weeks Editor AltFi News

You may not be rich, you may not be “sophisticated” but what kind of Stalinism is it that means The State can order you re what you can and cannot do with your money?!?

The entire ethos of “P2P” – the heart and most successful sector of Fintech – was connecting ordinary people, enabling lenders and borrowers to meet via the internet and both get a better deal than they would going through the megabanks.

Now if current FCA proposals go through this is all but dead – Ordinary Joe can keep borrowing (the system loves people being indebted) but the lending will only be unrestricted for Ingsoc Party members (“rich”, “sophisticated”) – Ordinary Joe will be capped at 10% of his investable assets.

It is also a constitutional outrage. The FCA’s job is to regulate platforms and ensure the bad/dodgy ones get shut down. The FCA is undemocratic and unelected – unlike our MPs we cannot vote them out of office – how dare they “regulate the people”? Regulating the people is something that ought to go through parliament not an office in Canary Wharf.

This topic undermines everything we have seen since the Magna Carta in 1215 became the first piece of legislation to limit the arbitrary power of the monarch.  Are we to return in this area to early Medieval Monarchical powers?

Ironically it was the UK’s Zopa that invented the UK globally. For a long time the UK State as a whole was highly supportive of Fintech and P2P. Now with government distracted, over a dozen years of success (&the records of the leading platforms have been far far better than bank returns for a diversified portfolio). Now only Party Members can fully avail themselves of these excellent returns. “To them that hath shall more be given”.

Ryan Weeks is the editor of AltFiNews the longest running AltFi news site, a real insider in this area. He is also the host of the successful Millennial Money Matters podcast and author of a best selling book as we shall come on to.

He joins us to discuss the Proposals in the round. Its a long document after a long consultation. Some proposals are sound, some so-so but this one is just plain wrong.

We all make mistakes and these are proposals. I call on the FCA to rethink this marketing restriction proposal. Already we have seen plenty of platforms changing from being P2Ps to avoid increasingly Draconian legislation. Already we have seen institutional money flooding into the sector. The whole purpose of the Fintech revolution was to make FS something of the people for the people. Let us keep it that way.

Topics discussed on the show include: Continue reading

LFP111 – The Role and Purpose of P2P Aggregators with Iain Niblock CEO Orca

Using “P2P loosely there are over fifty to invest in, all with different standards and approaches. It’s a “fragmented and complex” market. Professionals do much due diligence before investing. How is an individual investor to cope? One strong contender for The Answer is “Aggregators” who do the due diligence, sign you up with said platforms and offer model portfolios

Iain Niblock co-founder and CEO joins us today to lay out the problems and challenges of investing in “P2P” which in practice covers many approaches in a diverse landscape.

Orca are also a rare example of a well-regional Fintech being based in Northern Ireland with an office in Edinburgh.

Topics discussed on the show include:  Continue reading

LFP103 – Online Lending/Borrowing (Formerly P2P), Past, Present, Future with Christian Faes CEO Lendinvest

Once upon a time P2P was a simple thing. Now it’s more accurate to see it as online lending and borrowing. Models vary, regulation varies, the most successful platform was started by a bank, direct lenders have wholesale flows in funding retail or corporate outflows, others have just retail funds and others mixed.

Quite a complex state of affairs and in this episode Christian Faes joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about where this all came from, where it is and where it is going.

Lendinvest itself is no longer a P2P in the current definition but an online investment platform which is itself only one of their many channels.

Topics discussed include: Continue reading