Asset Finance  through peer Lending

Just watched the Formula One and happy to be celebrating a win for our British hero Lewis Hamilton. It is awesome when you can see someone with so much commitment to excellence finally reach his goal, and it was great to see Nico Rosberg so professional in defeat. It is a testament to the work ethic of both racers and the teamwork in Mercedes and we are thrilled for Lewis.

Our week started with the Lendit conference last Monday and as silly as this may sound it felt like a Formula One weekend. Everyone was there from the big teams of Funding Circle and Ratesetter to the new teams like Ablrate. We all made our pitches and presentations, we made our predictions and we made new contacts, but we were all trying to find out what the others were up to!  Most of all it feels like we are in a race, a race to develop our technology, our products and our teams.

I sat on the 'New Generation Platforms' panel and discussed Ablrate. I was interesting to be on the panel straight after the institutional panel. I got the impression that they were saying that institutions are finding it difficult to invest through UK platforms, which is odd, especially as we have just announced our deal with Synthesis.

My big take away from the event was that the industry is evolving rapidly and the technology is going to get better, but it is going to be the Ratesetter route where lenders have less involvement in choosing loans or it’s going to go where more tools are available for bringing lenders together with borrowers. We feel our natural route is the latter.

In line with this thinking we are continuing the development of the platform and will have new technology in the New Year that gives our lenders more and more tools to manage their investments. We have also expanded the team with addition of Andy Sweeney as our Head of Fixed Income products.

Andy has an MA in Law from Cambridge and has over 16 years of experience in debt capital markets, all gained working in major global investment banks. He began his career at Citigroup with a focus on raising short term finance for companies via the commercial paper market. You can read more on our team page.

We will have more loans coming shortly and as we move towards the end of the year we have one eye on 2015. With further FCA rules coming and full regulation due by the end of the year we have begun the process of making sure that our structures, our team and technology are ready for the transition.

We have had further enquiries from institutions to join our investing partners at Synthesis and we are working to make this new phase in the journey of Ablrate beneficial for all our investors.

In Formula One terms we may not be world champions this year, but we have had a great season so far, we are building our team on a great foundation, we have our eye on some podiums next year and with your support we believe we can start working our way up the grid.

Regards
David