Relendex gains full FCA authorisation

Real estate peer-to-peer lender becomes latest fully authorised platform.

Relendex, a peer-to-peer/marketplace lending platform for real estate loans, has joined the ranks of the fully authorised. The platform is now on its way to launching an Innovative Finance ISA, pending approval from HMRC.

It is now no longer accurate to state – as we are accustomed to stating – that only a “handful” of platforms have been authorised. There are now dozens of fully authorised platforms, spanning a diverse range of structures, from luxury asset lending, to branch-based lending, to payday loans.

But if you were to combine the cumulative lending volumes of all of the fully authorised platforms, you’d still fall some way short of the output of even one member of “the big three” (Zopa, Funding Circle, and RateSetter), each of which has lent around £2bn to date. And yet these largest players continue to languish under interim permissions, meaning they cannot begin offering IFISAs of their own. They will almost certainly miss a second consecutive tax cut-off, with the deadline fast approaching.

Relendex CEO Michael Lynn said that appetite for P2P/marketplace lending in the property sector is growing rapidly, and that authorisation will only accelerate that growth.

“FCA full authorisation marks a fantastic start to 2017 for the Relendex team and platform which will further encourage and facilitate investment in commercial property from both our UK and foreign investors,” he said.

Relendex raised an undisclosed sum of equity capital from 3S Investments Ltd in the summer of last year. The platform has facilitated a little over £8m in real estate loans to date, according to AltFi Data.