WELENDUS LOAN BOOK HITS £200,000 IN JUST FIVE MONTHS

Ethical short-term lender Welendus has surpassed the £200,000 mark in investor funded loans on their peer-to-peer platform.

Founded by former NASA engineer and rocket scientist Nadeem Siam, Welendus was created to fill the gap in the market for short-term, emergency cash loans, without the exorbitant interest rates and penalising fees of a traditional payday lender.

Since the release of the beta platform in January 2018, followed by the full launch this April, Welendus has received over 12,000 applications for its peer-to-peer community funded loans, and have hit £200,000 on their loan book just five months after operations began.

The automated P2P platform removes the need for administration fees and extortionate APRs by ensuring borrowers are able to make repayments, and algorithmically matching them to the most suitable lender instantly. This drastically reduces staffing and company overheads, and these savings mean highly competitive and lower interest rates can be offered to customers.

With consumers increasingly shunning high interest credit providers and unarranged overdraft fees, demand has risen for ethical, flexible lending models. A peer-to-peer financed loan offers investors the chance to funnel funds back into communities, and gives borrowers the ability to deal with credit emergencies without incurring significant and burgeoning debt.

Welendus received authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in October 2017 and has previously used the crowdfunding platform Seedrs to build the platform.

Nadeem Siam, CEO and founder of Welendus said: “Reaching £200,000 on our loan book represents a significant milestone for Welendus, having launched our peer-to-peer platform just five months ago and while still at our beta release. Our figures reflect a real and growing consumer demand for ethically sourced, short-term credit, and with a quarter of British adults having no savings1 for unexpected cash emergencies, it is vital that borrowers have access to affordable, fair, and flexible short-term finance.”

1. Statistic from a study of 2620 UK respondents commissioned by Skipton Building Society, 20/3/18