Bondora Celebrates 1 Bln Euros Mark

Tallinn-headquartered social lending service Bondora hit 1 billion euro mark in processed loan applications on Thursday.

Of the applications Bondora has approved 150 million euros of loans to its marketplace, and investors have funded 52 million.

Bondora was founded as isePankur back in 2008 and pioneered the concept of social lending in Estonia. Today it has lending clients also in Finland and Spain – and investors in 40 countries around the world. The service allows individuals and small to medium-sized enterprises to borrow and lend between each other, skipping the whole traditional banking process.

Founder and CEO Pärtel Tomberg said the main drivers for reaching the milestone have been investments in mass-marketing and development of technology platform.

“Reaching a billion of processed loan applications shows that there is a huge demand in the personal loan market that banks in Europe are not able to service,” Tomberg said. “The current Fintech boom is based on the fact that banks have had to focus on compliance ever since 2008 and hence they have focused on protecting their big businesses – mortgages and commercial banking. All the niches are beyond their reach and that is the reason why these are now attacked from every direction.”

Nordic fintech scene saw a major exit earlier this week when Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) bought Finnish online business banking startup Holvi.