Australia’s first P2P SocietyOne cracks $300 million in loans in its fifth year
The growth of SocietyOne's loan book demonstrates the increasing strength of the peer-to-peer lending sector.
Australia's first peer-to-peer (P2P) lender SocietyOne has today released its latest loan book figures, which show that it has surpassed $312 million in total loan originations since it first started operating in August 2012. The company's fifth year has so far been marked by impressive growth, with its loan book increasing by $60 million over the past six months to $189 million and the lender advancing over $100 million of new loans, up 67% on last year.
SocietyOne's CEO and managing director Jason Yetton said that the results reflected the strong business momentum.
"Growing interest from borrowers and investor funders over the past 12 months is proof that our proposition of offering a better deal than the major banks and providing investors with attractive risk-adjusted returns is making a real difference in the marketplace for personal loans," he said.
"Over the past 12 months, we have had more than 140,000 Australians enquire about a loan with SocietyOne, which shows that consumers are responding in large numbers to the idea that they can leverage their good credit history to get a better deal."
Source: SocietyOne
SocietyOne's combined lending of $45 million in Q1 2017 and $57 million in Q2 2017 resulted in a year-on-year growth of almost 70% for the six-month period ending 30 June 2017. This compares to $61 million of new lending in the first half of 2016.
The loan book growth wasn't just on the borrowing side, either. There was a record amount of committed funds made available in Q1 2017 by individual investors from existing and new institutions and high net worth individuals. The total amount of funds currently available is 315 with $68.3 million in funding available at 30 June 2017.
Yetton says that part of this growth is due to the open banking reforms outlined by the government in the budget.
"This has been underlined by the strong support of our customers for the government’s open banking and comprehensive credit reporting reforms, with 88% of respondents backing the proposal to give consumers more control of their data and 72% saying banks should share that information."
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