Launch date set for Squirrel Money

Squirrel Money is set to launch in less than a fortnight.

Friday, October 16th 2015, 6:00AM

by Susan Edmunds

It will go live on October 29.

The peer-to-peer lender, an offshoot of broker firm Squirrel, will be the second major participant in the New Zealand market.

A third, Lendme, is in the final testing stages. Lending Crowd also has a licence.

Harmoney has been operating for a year.

Squirrel founder John Bolton said it had taken almost a year of IT development to get Squirrel Money ready to go.

He said all loans would be authentic person-to-person lending.

Harmoney has big institutional backing from organisations such as Heartland Bank and 80% of its lending in its first year was backed by those investors.

Squirrel will lend loans up to $70,000 and charge $250 for unsecured loans.

Interest rates will be set by a bidding system, so rates will be driven by investor demand.

Bolton said its target market was homeowners and "young upwardly mobile borrowers".

It will use a reserve fund to protect investors from individual loan defaults.

If the reserve fund is depleted, all borrower interest payments will be diverted to the fund until it is replenished.

Tags: Squirrel

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