Squirrel Group, a mortgage broker and peer to peer lender, announced on Thursday the launch of its Secondary Market, which now allows loans to be on-sold to other investors. The lender revealed since its launch in November, the Secondary Market has been notably the most requested and anticipated feature from its investor community.
“You will now have the ability to ‘sell’ an existing investment on the marketplace and access your funds early, should another Investor be willing to match the original terms of your investment (i.e. interest rate, investment amount and remaining term). Simply select the new ‘Sell Investment’ option which can be found on the Investments tab of your Squirrel Money dashboard.”
Squirrel Money explained that for new investors they will now be able to both bid against new loans as well as ‘buy’ existing investments that are currently on sale through the secondary market:
“The 5 year market has attracted 60% of total lending through the Squirrel Money platform to date and offers Investors the best return on their money with an average interest rate of 8.9% p.a. Despite this, we have experienced that Investors were often reluctant to have their funds tied up for 5 years in case of emergency.”
Managing director of Squirrel Money, John Bolton, commented:
“For us to be a successful platform with older people putting money in the secondary market is important because its offers that liquidity that is really important to them. I think initially for us it’s about having it there so that people who are a bit nervous about investing in a five-year loan, even though they tend to pay back faster than that, it give them extra comfort.”
Squirrel Money added that it hopes the launch of the Secondary Market will help encourage more people to invest longer term and take advantage of the great rates on offer. Since its launch, the lender has lent out $225,899 in loans. Earlier this year, the company raised $3,424,400 through its crowdfunding campaign on Snowball Effect.