The most significant bank partnerships of the past year
Over the past year, many alternative lenders and peer-to-peer lending platforms have partnered with banks.
Most recently, Atom Bank has agreed to fund up to £500m of Landbay’s residential buy-to-let mortgages. But this is just the latest example of legacy and challenger banks teaming up with alternative lenders to access new markets and fund new loans.
Peer2Peer Finance News has listed some of the most significant partnerships of the past year.
Zopa and Tesco Bank
Zopa now has its own bank of course but it has worked with others too.
Last month, the alternative lender started rolling out its online hire purchase car finance product to Tesco Bank customers for the first time.
Last month, it was reported that Japanese investor SoftBank will take a £100m stake in Zopa as part of a major fundraising effort ahead of a planned public listing for the P2P lender and digital bank.
Goldman Sachs and Initiative Ireland
In August, Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm agreed a funding line with Irish P2P platform Initiative Ireland, which the P2P firm said will bring its lending capacity up to €900m (£767.6m) over the next three years.
In 2019, Goldman Sachs also made investments into London-based P2P platform Lendable and Swedish P2P lender Brocc.
LendInvest and J.P. Morgan
In September, LendInvest sold a £100m buy-to-let property portfolio to J.P. Morgan, in a move that is expected to generate a profit before tax of £1.6m for the Aim-listed lender.
LendInvest said that the investment will expand its capacity to lend in the buy-to-let market, while providing J.P. Morgan with exposure to these mortgages which have been originated via LendInvest’s proprietary technology platform.
LandlordInvest and United Trust Bank
In December 2020, LandlordInvest partnered with a bank for the first time, to fund a property deal worth over £1.5m.
The platform funded the first £410,959 of the deal, and United Trust Bank agreed to provide the remaining £1.2m as a first charge CBILS loan.
In April of this year, LandlordInevst managing director Filip Karadaghi said that the platform is looking to collaborate more with banks and with another P2P property lending platform.
Funding Circle and Starling Bank
Last year, Starling Bank revealed that the vast majority of its CBILS funding had gone to small firms via its Funding Circle partnership, rather than directly from the bank itself.
Statistics from the challenger lender showed that as of the end of July 2020, it had lent £227.75m to small businesses via Funding Circle, as part of an agreement to fund £300m of CBILS loans through the P2P lending platform.
Blend Network and Barclays Bank
Blend Network has previously partnered with Barclays, whereby the bank refers rejected cases to the P2P platform.
At the start of this year the platform said it has more very exciting partnerships coming up with challenger banks and other lenders.
RateSetter and Metro Bank
Metro Bank completed its acquisition of P2P lender RateSetter last year.
Over the summer, the bank reported revealed it had seen a 256 per cent increase in the volume of its consumer lending business between the first half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, thanks to the acquisition.