UK-based business lender Growth Street announced recently announced that investor returns up by 16.7% in 2018 through its peer-to-peer investment platform. Founded in 2013, Growth Street’s main mission is to help businesses grow. The platform has already matched £175 million of investors’ funds with growing businesses since launching.
“Ambitious businesses have many challenges to deal with, not least the struggle to find the right finance in a crowded, often confusing marketplace. We want to make things simpler and smarter.”
Growth Street reported that the effective rate for its investors has averaged 5.0% p.a. through 2018 to date, which represents a 16.7% increase on 2017, when investors’ effective rate was 4.3% p.a. The lender noted that although past performance is not an indicator of future results, it believes that the reduction in volatility of the available effective rate may make future returns more predictable.
“The improvement has come following a transformational year of growth. Growth Street is on course to increase the amount of outstanding loans on the platform by over 140% during 2018. This growth has been delivered by making a series of changes to Growth Street’s borrower origination strategy, such as making significant investments in its credit decision-making technology, and recruiting a national sales team. Growth Street has also focused on targeting larger businesses: in 2017, the average application Growth Street received was for £130k, while in 2018 to date the average application has been £310k.”
Speaking about the latest milestone, Greg Carter, Growth Street CEO, added:
“I’m delighted that we have demonstrated to investors that P2P can be a rewarding asset class. We’ve continued to refine our borrower acquisition strategies and underlying credit technology, and Growth Street has seen a really successful 2018. As the P2P sector continues to mature, we hope that 2019 will be similarly prosperous, both for our investors and the businesses benefiting from their capital.”