KissKissBankBank a prominent French crowdfunding platform announced today they are moving into the peer to peer lending space with the launch of Lendopolis. Lendopolis is described as a financement participatif (crowdfunding) platform that allows small to medium enterprises borrow funds. For the investor who chooses to lend money via the platform, Lendopolis expects to generate an annual interest rate of between 4% to 10% contingent upon the risk rating determined by their financial “experts”.
Les créateurs de @kissbankers lancent @Lendopolis. La plateforme 100% dédiée aux PME françaises http://t.co/QBGUx1FkDA
— lendopolis (@lendopolis) September 25, 2014
Applying companies are expected to be in operation 2 years or more and seek loans from €10,000 and up to €1 million.
A report in Rude Baguette notes that for small French companies it is a huge challenge to find funding from traditional sources – particularly for SME’s.
“95% du crédit mis à la disposition des entreprises par les banques bénéficient aux sociétés cotées” S. Jakobsen, Saxo Bank
— lendopolis (@lendopolis) September 25, 2014
As noted in the tweet from Lendopolis above, apparently 95% of the credit given by banks goes to publicly traded companies.
KissKissBankBank has raised €21 million to date. The opportunity to leverage the brand and enter a potentially more profitable space was probably an easy decision. With a growing number of cross border operations such as Bandora looking to expand it was probably only a matter of time.
