News

News

UK: Financial Technology Start-up is Leading the Challenge of Traditional Lending

UK: Financial Technology Start-up is Leading the Challenge of Traditional Lending

Five years ago, Samir Desai, James Meekings and Andrew Mullinger started a crowd-funding site that targeted enterprises with at least 50,000 pounds ($81,550) in annual sales that were having trouble getting credit from British banks. Today, Funding Circle is Britain’s No. 1 online matchmaker for small-business loans. From its inception through Sept. 25, it transacted 373 million pounds in lending between 32,000 investors and 5,000 firms, which pay interest rates ranging from 6 to 15 percent.

Alternative Financing