On Thursday, UK-based peer-to-peer lender Lending Works celebrated its fourth birthday. Founded in January 2014, Lending Works describes itself as a peer-to-peer lending platform that matches people looking for a better return on their money with sensible borrowers looking for a low-cost, flexible personal loan.
“It all started one rainy Sunday morning in a small Farringdon office back in January 2014. After nearly 18 months of blood, sweat and tears on the part of our CEO and CFO, the Lending Works dream became a reality. A back-of-the-envelope idea had evolved, and now officially launched as a living, breathing company. At that time, the concept of peer-to-peer lending in the UK was still very much in its infancy. Yet the 48 months since have seen it gather momentum at breakneck speed, and one of the driving forces of the sector’s march towards the financial services mainstream in this country has been its third-biggest consumer lending platform.”
As part of the birthday celebration, Lending Works took a look back on the past four years, including the launch of Lending Work’s services, facilitating more than £15 million in loans over the 12-month period, its first dalliance with the Moneywise Customer Service Awards, becoming the first P2PFA member to be fully authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), new website, and launching its first ISA. In regards to 2018’s plans, Lending Works added:
“In 2017, we placed a lot of emphasis on attracting creditworthy borrowers to our platform and ensuring that they benefited from a genuinely efficient, world-class customer journey. Such is the interconnectedness of the peer-to-peer lending ecosystem that, what’s good for borrowers, is good for lenders too. By bringing in streams of prime loan applicants, lender queues got shorter, and the upward pressure was put on returns – this at a time when savings rates, by comparison, remained utterly derisory.
“Yet 2018 will see us put some serious elbow grease into ensuring that our lenders – both existing and prospective – enjoy the best possible experience when using the Lending Works platform. We have a number of exciting projects in this respect lined up for the year ahead; ones which we will unveil in due course. This focus, coupled with many other initiatives across the business, leave us brimming with confidence that 2018 will be the best yet.”
