Scottish crowdfunder LendingCrowd eyes Holyrood bank colab

Scottish alternative funding firm LendingCrowd has stated that is keen to work with the Scottish Government in helping small high-growth businesses through Holyrood’s plans to establish a Scottish Business Development Bank.

The initiative will aim to support firms and LendingCrowd said its was well-placed to become a partner.

Chief executive Stuart Lunn added: “We’re also keen to work with other public sector organisations in Scotland which could distribute cash to Scottish businesses via our platform.”

LendingCrowd was founded by Mr Lunn and chairman Bill Dobbie only a year ago but it has facilitated 34 loans totalling £1.75million.

More than 1,100 investors have been signed up since the peer-to-business crowd-lending platform was launched.

Mr Lunn, whose team has visited both Aberdeen and Inverness in recent months in an attempt to woo more investors and explain to firms how crowdlending works, said: “We’ve grown the platform into a thriving business.

“We’ve achieved a lot in a year but this is just the start. We have ambitions to become one of the UK’s foremost peer-to-business platforms, and to do this we are constantly fine-tuning our operations to suit the needs of both investors and borrowers.”

Crowd-lending, where no equity changes hands, accounts for about 75 per cent of activity within the alternative finance market.