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P2P lending network Flender is looking to raise a multi-million funding round ahead of UK launch

Dublin and London-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending network Flender is looking to raise £2m in funding ahead of its wider UK launch later this year.

The FinTech startup, which allows regular people to tap their social networks for crowdfunding, has previously raised £500k on Seedrs ahead of its soft launch in Ireland earlier this year.

According to Peer 2 Peer Finance News, the P2P challenger is now tapping up institutional lenders as it looks to raise £2m in equity funding as well as further debt financing to support a wider roll-out across the country.

In quotes reported by the website, Flender co-founder Oli Cavanagh said: “We’re trying to cope with the Irish demand and build out the team first in order to be able to manage the UK demand, assuming it’s proportional.

“We’re also talking to a number of parties with a view to raising £2m equity funding and hoping to close in September. This will significantly help our UK launch.”

Speaking to Bdaily at the beginning of the year, Cavanagh explained that a key selling point of Flender’s offering would be its formalising of the untapped informal, social lending that everyone engages in with their friends and family.

According to the firm’s own research, informal lending currently equates to around £2.9bn in the UK, a lot of which is never paid back.

With Flender, users are able to set crowd fund money through email or their social networks and enter into a legal contract with their lenders to concretise the repayment process.

The FinTech firm is also engaging in more traditional crowdfunding efforts by giving businesses the chance to crowd fund cash from their own customers.