RateSetter’s borrowers have paid back £1bn
RATESETTER’S borrowers have paid back £1bn since the platform wrote its first loan in 2010.
The peer-to-peer lender announced the milestone on Tuesday afternoon and said that it has now lent almost £1.75bn to individuals and businesses across the UK, including £668m in 2016 alone.
RateSetter’s investors have earned £63m in interest over the platform’s lifetime, with average interest rates ranging between 3.1 per cent and six per cent on the firm’s rolling market and five-year market respectively.
“While it’s easy to focus on lending volumes, what matters in the long term is that platforms demonstrate that they’re lending to good borrowers who pay back, which is why we’re so proud of this milestone,” said chief executive and co-founder Rhydian Lewis (pictured). “To have collected £1bn back in is a good indicator of the quality of our lending.”
Read more: RateSetter: Savers prefer better returns to more protection
RateSetter also said in its announcement that every investor has received the rate they expected so far, due to its provision fund that reimburses investors when a borrower misses a repayment. However, this is no guarantee of future performance, the lender added.
The platform, which is one of the ‘big three’ P2P lenders alongside Funding Circle and Zopa, recently tweaked its provision fund to address concerns that it was too “binary”.
Under previous rules, if the fund were no longer able to cover expected defaults, all loans would be assigned to the fund and losses would be distributed equally.
The changes, which come into effect next month, mean that RateSetter will be able to divert interest and capital into the provision fund if it thinks losses are becoming too large.
This has been a week of P2P milestones; on Monday, Funding Circle announced that its UK division has now lent £2bn to small businesses. The platform lent out £820m in the UK last year.