Funding Circle

[Nuno]

Last Week Business Zone flagged up that the Govt was giving £20mill of (our) money to Funding Circle to lend to small business.

It has got a fair amount of coverage, and today's post had two letters to me asking if I needed funds.

Now, I'm not knocking Funding Circle, but how much is this PR and mailout blitz costing? Does it come from Govt (our) money? Is it necessary? Are they finding it that hard to loan out £20mill?

It strikes me that it proves the old adage that anything that the Govt gets involved in doubles the cost, at least.

As SirEarl said" The most dangerous words in the world are:'I'm from the Government and I'm here to help' " (Or did Ronald Reagan say that? Hard to tell the difference...)

 

[businessfunding]

The answer to your question is no - Funding Circle raised a significant sum in equity specifically for promotion and are spending it very freely.

The Government money is ear-marked for lending purposes.

It may or may not be a coincidence but since the Government money was introduced their processes have become far less fluid and they seem to have reverted to a 'computer says' model.

Only my opinion, but in terms of investment it is a pretty safe use of taxpayer money - in terms of helping business it adds very little as Crowd Lending investors are already doing the job pretty well.