Funding Circle’s lending has just surpassed £1bn December 29, 2015 UK fintech unicorn Funding Circle has surpassed the milestone of lending £1bn to thousands of small businesses across the UK. The peer-to-peer lender, now the third biggest in the UK for small business loans, racked up £500m in loans this year, bringing the total lent since it started in 2010 to more than £1bn. More than 40,000 investors [...]
Need funding? Alternative finance providers more than twice as likely as banks to approve small businesses loans December 27, 2015 Small businesses are more than twice as likely to get their loans approved through alternative finance than traditional banks, a fresh report has found. Over four in five, 82 per cent, of small businesses that went to alt fi providers got their funding approved, according to research from finance supermarket Funding Options. Banks, meanwhile, only [...]
Five charts that show how millennials’ Christmas celebrations differ from traditional ones December 23, 2015 Gearing up for a Christmas dinner with pudding, turkey and all the trimmings? Let us take a stab and guess that you’re 35 years or older. As it turns out, where you’ll be spending your Christmas day reveals more than you might think about your age. Not to mention what you’re putting on the table [...]
Pension tax relief changes are forcing employers to rethinking how they reward their higher earners December 23, 2015 A third of companies have gone back to the drawing table over how they reward their higher earners, as new restrictions slash the amount people can put into a pension pot tax free. Research released today by professional services firm PwC found that changes to the annual allowance for higher earners, which are due to come [...]
On demand beauty service Milk Beauty raises more than £225,000 on Seedrs crowdfund December 22, 2015 Hackney-based Milk Beauty, the start-up which comes to your home or office to provide beauty treatments on demand, has raised £225,983 in the first 10 days of its crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs. Milk has reached 75 per cent of its investment target of £300,000, for which it is offering an 18.76 per cent stake in [...]
Honesty is the best policy: Companies need a transparent culture to attract and retain the best talent December 22, 2015 As we head into 2016, the job market is soaring towards unprecedented levels of competition. Employers looking to attract and retain top talent can no longer rely on big salaries alone in the year to come. Many are already relying on a growing list of perks from flexi-working to free beer to inspiring office spaces. [...]
Fintech firm Transferwise in early stage talks to team up with banks in the UK December 21, 2015 London fintech firm Transferwise is set to partner up with the banks it has previously accused of “scamming” customers. The money transfer firm has announced it is in early stage talks with up to 20 banks around the world, including established and challenger banks in the UK, to embed its services in their online banking [...]
Fintech adoption could double among digitally active consumers in the next year December 21, 2015 Consumers' love of technology is growing at such a pace that their adoption of financial technology (fintech) could double in the space of a year. According to a survey of more than 10,000 digitally active consumers from around the world released today by EY, 16 per cent have used at least two fintech services in the last six months, [...]
Denise Leicester’s Ila is a beauty brand that loves you back December 21, 2015 Beauty products all claim to be the most age-defying, youth-providing, beautifying, and so on. And there’s a bamboozling list of chemical names which claim to do just that. But a growing awareness that what you put on your skin is as important for your health as what you put in your mouth, is leading more [...]
The biggest economic stories of 2015 and 2016 – Investec Comment December 21, 2015 Seven years after cutting them to record lows, last week, the US Federal Reserve finally put speculation to rest about when it would begin the process of increasing interest rates, announcing a small 25 basis points rise. This was hardly a surprise: it was almost completely factored into markets, so the real question was over [...]
