Christophe Langlois
It took about ten years to Zopa, one of the very first peer-to-peer lenders globally to launch back in 2006, to reach the social lending milestone of £1 billion. They aim to reach £2 billion by the end of 2016.
Giles Andrews and his Zopa team reached a historical milestone this year: they’ve officially lent more than £1 Billion to 200,000 UK borrowers. It took Zopa about ten years to reach that figure.
But rest assured, Giles is committed not to rest on their laurels. He’s aiming to fully leverage the lack of trust for traditional banks in the UK to accelerate Zopa’s growth and reach £2 billion by the end of 2016.
To achieve his ambitious goals, Giles recently demonstrated that Zopa was prepared to partner with other UK financial institutions like the much loved Metro Bank.
Zopa’s CEO quotes
Giles Andrews – Co-Founder and CEO at Zopa: [quote_center]“Our rapid growth reflects the better value Zopa offers consumers. Zopa is a trusted service for over 200,000 people who are looking to borrow or grow their money. We’re delighted to have lent over £1 billion and will continue to deliver the best service across consumer finance as we aim to lend our next £1 billion in 2016. I’m proud that over the past 10 years Zopa has established itself as a trusted and mainstream service for UK consumers.”[/quote_center]
Zopa’s Social Lending Stats
- Number of borrowers: 146,000
- Number of lenders: 61,000
- Interest returned: over £57m
- Average lending rate: 5%
- Loan purposes by volume: Cars (40%), Home Improvements (22%), Debt consolidation (22%), Wedding (2%), Holidays (2%), Motorbikes (2%), Other (4%)
Top Zopa Stats – Zopa Infographic 2015
On the back of my recent nomination to the 2015 edition of the European Digital Financial Services Power 50, I decided to try out a new concept on VisibleBanking.com: I’m creating a new series of short articles tagged ‘newsflash‘ to give you the heads up on some of the top news and insights curated by me and my team on daily basis.
Even though those articles will be rather short, they’ll still require a considerable amount of work everyday. So the question is: how valuable to you is this new news service, including this article on banking innovation ‘P2P Lender Zopa Reaches £1BILLION Social Lending Milestone’?
If you enjoyed reading my article or if you wanted to react, I invite you to connect with me here, on twitter (@Visible_Banking) or on LinkedIn.
