Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of the economy and are being supported through the Covid-19 pandemic by the Government-backed Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). Funding for CBILS loans is restricted to institutional lenders and we expect that all of our new lending will be made through this scheme for the foreseeable future, having been accredited as a CBILS lender by the British Business Bank.
Our secondary market, which enables lenders to buy and sell existing loan parts, remains active. Lenders with our Self Select accounts can choose the loan parts they want to buy or sell, while those with our Growth or Income accounts can use the auto-investment feature to enable our platform to purchase loan parts automatically.
Auto-investment
It’s quick and easy for lenders to activate auto-investment by:
- Logging in to their LendingCrowd dashboard
- Choosing the account they want to change
- Selecting ‘Manage account’, then ‘Manage your repayments’
- Choosing Growth Mode or Income Mode to reactivate auto-investment
Withdrawals
If you have money in your account that you haven’t lent out, you can withdraw it by logging in and clicking on ‘Transfer’ and ‘Withdraw’. The first time you withdraw funds, you’ll need to enter your bank details for us to verify. You will be notified by email once your bank details have been verified or if we require additional information to complete our checks.
Once we have verified your bank details, you can request the amount you want to transfer. Any available cash has to be held or transferred into your Self Select Account (withdrawal account) to be withdrawn to your bank. We’ll then return it to your bank account within three working days, or to your debit card in between five and 10 working days (as we use an external card payments provider, we can’t control how long this takes).
If you have cash held in one of our Innovative Finance ISA accounts, you can request a partial transfer to a new ISA provider by asking them for a transfer authority form. By following this transfer process, you will maintain the tax benefits* of your ISA funds.
We would encourage lenders to regularly log in to their dashboards so they can monitor their accounts and identify whether they need to make any changes to their current lending strategy.
*Tax treatment depends on the individual circumstances of each lender and may be subject to change in future.