Smart Lenders, an asset management company specialized in managing portfolios of loans issued through online lending platforms (marketplace/crowdlending), is celebrating its fifth birthday. Founded in 2014 in London by Erich Bonnet (now based in Paris), Smart Lenders is now providing some data points regarding its operations:
- $ 600 million of loans purchased / 60 000+ loans in the US
- $ 300 million raised from investors across its vehicles
- $ 185 million AUM in a SICAV launched in July 2016
Smart Lenders now has a team of 11 professionals.
The company moved to Paris in January 2018 with the “proactive support of the AMF and the Paris Region services who helped the team to relocate to France.”
Smart Lenders explains its process:
“Our approach depends on the rigorous selection of the partnering platforms and the scoring of the borrowers through our proprietary algorithms and models, that use statistical methods and artificial intelligence. Our effort in research and development has allowed us to be granted the “Jeune Entreprise Innovante” (JEI) status this spring, which is granted by the French state to young and innovative firms.”
A new fund is planned for early 2020 which will be dedicated to funding European SMEs.
Smart Lenders says it aims to boost its development with a large panel of French and European investors in 2020, through several fund projects adapted to a wide spectrum of investors, while aiming to bring robust and trustworthy solutions to the search for yield.
“We validated the relevance and sustainability of our business model since our launch in 2014. We are now starting the expansion phase to bring our know-how and a simplified access to this new asset class to a larger scope of investors,” explained Bonnet.