The crowdlending platforms Lend and Swisspeers rely on their community and finance themselves through crowd investing.
Crowdlending platforms trust the crowd and vice versa. That is in the nature of the business model. Crowdlending companies turn the crowd into investors. With the money from these investors, they grant loans to private individuals and SMEs. Usually at more favorable conditions compared to traditional banks. And sometimes as an alternative if banks show little or no interest in granting loans to SMEs, for example.
Crowdlending companies act as intermediaries between borrowers and lenders. Ideally, some will receive loans on favorable terms and the others, the crowd, will receive interesting returns on their invested capital.
Because of this connection, the relationship between crowdlending platforms and the crowd is special. You know each other, if only online, and you trust each other. It is therefore obvious to motivate the crowd and thus your own community to consider the crowdlending platform itself as a good investment and investment opportunity.
Crowdlending or Crowdinvesting?
With the concept of repayable loans from the crowd, 497.5 million francs were moved in crowdlending in Switzerland in 2022. This form of financing increased sharply between 2016 and 2021 and was dampened, probably temporarily, in 2022 by the changed interest rate environment.
In the field of crowd investing, the crowd invested CHF 135.4 million as new shareholders in a startup or SME they trusted. This form of raising capital has not yet finally established itself as an alternative financing option, the volume fluctuates from year to year.
However, since the market entry of platforms like Conda or Oomnium and others gain significantly more visibility and momentum. Startups and FinTechs such as Inyova, Neon, Relai, ElleXX and others have recently successfully implemented the idea of raising fresh capital through their own community and getting new shareholders on board with crowd investing campaigns. Successful means that, for example, the impact investing fintech Inyova collected CHF 7 million and the neo-bank Neon collected a total of CHF 13.6 million with two campaigns.
The good run of crowd investing is likely to continue, especially since every successful campaign can give other startups and SMEs the idea of raising fresh capital via this financing channel.
Lend and Swisspeers: the leap from crowdlending to crowdinvesting
The crowdlending platforms Lend and Swisspeers not only broker loans, they also raise capital for themselves through their community. Not in the form of loans, but rather through the possibility of participating in the company.
The FinTech Lend has been arranging loans to private individuals as well as business loans and mortgages via its crowdlending platform since 2015. With a crowd investing campaign launched in mid-June, Lend convinced 268 investors to join as shareholders. The campaign, which ended on July 7, 2023, has brought in CHF 2.53 million for the company.
The FinTech Swisspeers specializes in SME financing. The company has been on the market with its crowdlending platform since 2016. Swisspeers also wants to make people from its own community shareholders. Investors and borrowers can subscribe for shares in the current campaign until the end of August. The FinTech wants to bring in 1 million francs in this round, at the moment 44 percent of the targeted sum has been financed.
These two campaigns are remarkable in that specialized crowdlending companies use their own field of expertise to generate new capital through crowdinvesting.
2023-08-02 23:40:13
#Crowdlending #platforms #financed #crowd
