Lender & Spender is a peer-to-peer lending company and one of two in the Netherlands to entirely focus on consumer loans. Their platform, connecting directly investors and borrowers, offers highly competitive loans, in terms of cost, time and security. Amongst the bests P2P lending businesses in the country, the start-up is a perfect example of the advantages alternative finance can offer.
The Amsterdam-based lending start-up is the bridge between investors and borrowers. Targeting risk-sensible and rational individuals, the platform focuses on consumers from its lending side. The profile of such consumers is typically bank registered, employed persons with a decent financial history. Consumers can apply for loans ranging from 5,000 to 25,000 with fixed maturity and interest, within strict criteria guaranteeing a non-existent default rate. Competing directly with banks for such loan area, Lender & Spender offers the one of the sharpest interest rates in the Netherlands for loans up to 10,000.
On the investment side, investors have to possess a bank account in the EU and can be companies or consumers alike. The investments range from EUR 100 to EUR 80,000, without limit for companies, and can be done occasionally or on a monthly basis. Every investment is fully spread out across the totality of loans to provide a diversification sharing the eventual risk amongst all investors. The start-up does not take money from its investors, but sells them loans available at the time of the investment, procuring an immediate return.
This innovative platform is fully digitalized, an automation enabling a frictionless and swift process outranking traditional financial institutions: borrowers can apply for a loan in a couple of minutes and typically receive the money within one to two days. Lender & Spender is currently hosting more than 300 borrowers, produces 3 loans every day and is nearing 700 investors, representing an emission of half a million in loans each months, a growing trend.
Co-founder Robert Leclercq started the company together with Huub van der Wart. Their business and IT competencies combined enabled the platform to go live in October 2016. Since then, the young and ambitious team is expanding, as they are currently looking for two positions covering operational and IT functions. For the coming years, their goal is to develop a sizable portfolio in the Netherlands reaching 200 to 300 hundred million, which would let them enough space to offer different types of products (e.g. self employed, student loans, small businesses loans). A foreign expansion is considered after these developments.
Lender & Spender became a member of Holland FinTech recently. The start-up joined our network because they arrived at a stage where exposure to the industry and establishing links and partnerships with stakeholders is crucial.
