UK online personal finance peer-to-peer lending firm Zopa has secured £60m in its latest closed funding round.
Image: UK’s Zopa has secured £60m funding for next generation bank. Photo: courtesy of hyena reality / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Zopa intends to use the latest round of investment to meet the capital requirements for its next generation bank.
The company noted that it is expecting to introduce its next generation bank soon and expand its product offering.
The new injection of capital takes a funding round to close, which started earlier this year. The first stage helped to gather £44m of funding.
The new and existing investors have been participated in the investment round.
Zopa also said that it built a sustainable and profitable peer-to-peer business and achieved full year profitability in 2017 for the first time since 2012.
The firm has provided more than £3.7bn in unsecured personal loans to customers in the UK, to date.
Since last 12 months, the firm has lent more than £996m to its customers. The company has more than 60,000 active individual investors, as well as a select group of institutional partners.
Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana said: “This new funding takes us a step closer to realising our vision of being the best place for money in the UK.
“Having served half a million customers to date, Zopa is set to redefine the finance industry once again through our next generation bank to meet a broader set of UK customers’ financial needs.”
Claimed to be the first peer-to-peer lending company, Zopa was launched in the UK in 2005.
In 2013, the company introduced the Safeguard fund as a tax-efficient way for investors to offset bad debt. In 2014, Zopa started working with institutional investors to serve diverse customer base.
In 2016, the company launched a new suite of investment products for investors, including Zopa Access, Zopa Classic and Zopa Plus.
During the same year, the firm also announced plans to launch a next generation bank to provide FSCS-protected savings products and overdraft alternatives.
The company is a founding member of the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA), and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).