The era of Crowdlending opens new market for startups

Please login or
register

Ritah Ayebare Nyakato

20.07.2016

Crowdlending in Switzerland is still in the early stage yet significant growth results have been recorded. Last year, a growth rate of +126% was recorded with CHF 7.9 million invested in 266 projects. The crowdlending market has opened new opportunities for entrepreneurs to create new startups in form of platforms.

In Switzerland crowdfunding was first established in 2008. This gave individuals the opportunity to raise funds in form of loans for their ventures from the crowd via crowdfunding platforms on the internet. Currently, there are about 40 crowdfunding platforms in Switzerland among them seven crowdlending platforms.

Through crowdlending, private ventures and businesses have the opportunity to acquire loans from the crowd. In return for the loan, the lender receives interest payment depending on the level of risk involved. Another term used for this form of funding is peer-to-peer lending or social lending.

In Switzerland significant growth in Crowdlending was achieved in the previous year. The Crowdfunding monitoring report 2016 published by the University of Applied Sciences Luzern early this year reported a significant increase in the total amount of money raised through Crowdlending in the year 2015. A total sum of CHF 7.9 Million was collected through crowdlending with a growth rate of +126%. 266 campaigns were financed. Crowdlending has continued to become more popular not only among start-ups but also among investors.

The crowdlending market in Switzerland is booming and has opened new opportunities for entrepreneurs. New startups operating crowdlending platforms are been established and many projects have been successfully financed. Today, there are 7 crowdlending platforms: the pioneer Cashare for both SMEs and private ventures, CreditGate24 for private and institutional investors, creditworld for both private and on SME loan, Lend, splendid that is specifically focusing on education loans, swisspeers for SMEs and Wecan.fund for SMEs. Other platforms – such as Miteinander-Erfolgreich and Raizers – also operate alongside other models as crowdlending platforms.

Cashare laid the foundation for crowdlending. Cashare was first crowlending platform to be established and since then several platforms have been founded, projects have been financed and investors have earned returns on investments through interest rates. Since 2008, Cashare serves as an intermediary for loans and micro loans for both SMEs and private persons. To date, the platform has financed about 1246 loan projects. In the first quarter of 2016 Cashare reported that it has offered loans of over CHF 1 million per month to small and medium sized companies and private persons.

0Comments

Company profiles on startup.ch

Cashare AG

CreditGate24 AG

Swisspeers AG

Wecan Group

rss