Linked Finance, Ireland’s leading peer-to-peer lending platform, has appointed Niall Dorrian as chief executive. He was previously Director of Mobile with eircom, and chief executive of several Digicel markets across the Caribbean and Central America.

The company said Peter O’Mahony, the original CEO and founder, will take on a new role of Chief Strategy Officer, and will focus on building the types of strategic partnerships and relationships that Linked Finance will require as it seeks to expand.

Dorrian will focus on day-to-day operations and deliver on the company’s ambitious expansion plans over the next two years.

Linked Finance has lent over €11m more than 500 businesses to date, and in its next phase of growth is targeting to have lent over €350m by the end of 2019 with the ultimate goal of becoming the country’s biggest source of non-bank SME finance.

In Association with

Dorrian commented: “I worked for 10 years through the global boom in mobile communications, and I think the fintech sector, and in particular P2P lending, is about to experience a similar phase of growth.

“We offer small businesses in Ireland a friendly service, speedy decision making and affordable access to finance that can help grow their businesses.

“There are a large number of ‘discouraged borrowers’ out there: strong, creditworthy SMEs who won’t consider finance because they have become disillusioned with financial system in recent years. We believe that a new model like Linked Finance can help attract many of these businesses back into the market."

O’Mahony said: “We are actively exploring partnerships that will complement the current retail funding base of the business. It is clear that there is strong appetite from both domestic and international institutions to lend into our sector, which would help us to fulfil the demand there is among Irish SMEs to borrow funds.”

Fixed Rate Loans

Linked Finance has been tweaking its business model by offering fixed-rate loans instead of the original model where lenders bid for loans by offering the amount they are prepared to lend at an interest rate of their choosing.

With fixed-rate loans, the interest rate is set at the beginning of the process by Linked Finance and lenders choose how much they wish to lend at that rate.

The company has also introduced a new Insurance Premium Finance product, allowing businesses to borrow money to pay their insurance premium, and repay it over 11 months.

In the pipeline is a new credit grading system, whereby Linked Finance will provide a grade with each new loan request. The minimum loan amount starts at €50, interest rates available typically range from 8 to 12% and the default rate to date is 1.16%, according to the company. To date the company has facilitated loans for 420 Irish SMEs.

Linked P2P Ltd, the Linked Finance operating company, booked a loss of €485,000 in the year to April 2015. Shareholders’ funds at year-end were a negative €609,000 though that’s because €1,550,000 investment by Frontline Ventures and others is classified in the company accounts under creditors.