socialmedian: Smava is Germany’s most successful social lending platform

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clip

Smava is Germany’s most successful social lending platform

Source: TechCrunch

Oct 21, 2009

Summary

[Germany] Every financial crisis has its loosers, but it also has its winners. In Germany it is the “social lending” online platform Smava. Not only has Germany’s leading consumer safety group Stiftung Warentest recommended the peer-to-peer credit market place over other competitors for the third year in a row. The company with VC financing from Earlybird and Hamburg-based Neuhaus Partners has also seen impressive growth.

Smava was able to double its loan volume from €2.5m in the second quarter of 2009 to €5m in the third, co-founder and CEO Alexander Artopé says. In 2009 Smava has already originated over €10m in loans and over €16m since its inception in 2006. The company makes more monthly business than its US competitor Prosper, Artopé calculates, although the US market is much bigger. While in September 2009 Prosper originated $1.22m in loans (€818K) Smava made nearly twice that amount: €1.5m. Also Prosper got five times more VC funding than Smava, a whopping $40m.

One growth driver is the current credit crunch, because banks in Germany hesitate to lend mo

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment