Angelo Salvatore

• The 22-strong roundtable discussed various aspects of opportunities in the non-bank lending space including the opportunities in SME lending, the maturity of the market and the sustainability of some platforms' business models and the need for greater transparency.
• Christian Gut, manager of the P2P lending Fund, said investors need to fully understand track records of managers/funds and of how loans are performing. He said it is “really hard to understand” like-for-like comparisons when platform are changing underwriting models.  “Every country and platform is doing things in different ways. The industry should decide a certain level of credit and risk that should exist across the aboard,” he said.
• Maseco’s Matthews added that niches are well suited to alternative credit but  “you can’t throw a lot of money” at them as this would harm yields.
• RM’s Nicholl’s said that trust in the sector could be improved by third party audits leading to more capital into the sector.
• AltFi Data’s Fekete added that lenders are showing more and more interest in having their data assessed and compared on a like-for-like basis. That is a vital part of the maturation of the sector, he said.

• Salvatore, who has invested on behalf of the EIF in Lendix, said the returns on offer are not the only important thing for the supranational entity but that the consistency of returns was equally important. He says, in the wake of Brexit, We the EIF is trying to increase exposure to us many EU countries as possible as well as neighbouring countries such as Turkey. “Brexit has created uncertainty but nothing has changed so far,” he added.
• De Nonneville said that the benefits of the EIF fund as a source of capital are numerous.  He added that the Brexit vote has not yet really been much of a factor in de-railing demand for either loans or investment, but he said there is a apparel increase in demand for higher ticket size loans.

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