Finance Kitchen to launch hospitality-focused P2P lender
Specialist finance broker Finance Kitchen is set to launch its own lending book to fund loans for the hospitality sector.
These loans will be partially funded part through block discounting, and partly via peer-to-peer investing.
The new lender is aimed at helping smaller and independent hospitality operators who are seeking to acquire and fit out new sites.
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“As the restaurant sector looks to bounce back from a terrible couple of years, access to cash is vital for those looking to grow and get their plans back on track,” said Finance Kitchen’s co-founder Ian Woodley.
“Not only does the financial sector have confidence issues with restaurants they don’t entirely understand its needs and therefore good deals just don’t get done which is heart breaking.”
Woodley co-founded the Finance Kitchen business with Angela Bramhall in 2015, and since then it has acted as a broker for asset finance, particularly for the fit out and refurbishment of restaurants.
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Bramhall said that although restaurants are viewed as niche lending, “it’s a huge niche”.
“It’s about time the sector had a provider who displayed greater empathy and viewed restaurants as not just another vanilla business,” she added.
Bramhall and Woodley have already begun to hold talks with key investors and potential wholesale funders with a view to launch the lending business later in 2022.
Woodley told Peer2Peer Finance News that the lender is not yet regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, “but will obviously be so before launch.”
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