Madiston plc’s joint venture partner, Peer to Peer (P2P) lending platform FinBee, has received a licence to become the first P2P platform to offer small business loans in Lithuania. FinBee already uses the Madiston technology to support its peer to peer consumer lending and has now extended that technology to launch all new business lending, aiming to issue 200 small business loans over the next twelve months.

With limited access to funding, small businesses in Lithuania have struggled to expand, limiting the growth of the economy.  Recognising this, the Lithuanian government recently established the legislation needed to allow Peer to Peer Lenders to provide business finance loans and FinBee played an active role in its development.

Laimonas Noreika, CEO of FinBee, explained: “We were delighted to be the first P2P platform to receive our licence to help small businesses borrow to finance their growth.  Our technology helped us to achieve this.  When we first launched consumer lending, we chose Madiston’s software because it was ready to go with what we needed but also gave us the ability to add functionality as we grow.   The first step in our expansion plan was to add business lending and the technology was there for us, Madiston has been a supportive partner throughout.”

Audrius Griskevicius, head of business lending at FinBee, added: “FinBee investors can now diversify their portfolios further by investing in both personal and business loans with a sensible return on their investment. The Madiston technology interfaces with other systems to enable us to employ best market practices in credit risk assessment and the loans that we present to our investors go through our thorough and in depth analysis.”

Tim Simon, CEO of Madiston, described the technology: “We’re told by people researching Marketplace Lending technology, that the Madiston software is one of the most comprehensive, highly configurable, global systems out there. Being global was particularly key to FinBee, with our multi-currency, multi-lingual facilities, and we look forward to helping them with their plans to expand into neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe.”

Madiston plc (madiston.com) was established by Tim Simon, an entrepreneur, who floated his two previous financial technology companies on the London Stock Exchange and the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) respectively.

In researching early forms of crowdfunding, Tim came across Peer to Peer Lending and realised its potential to change the nature of financial services. With Tim’s background in Fintech, he designed and built,to banking standards, a flexible, configurable platform for all flavours of crowdfunding and Peer to Peer Lending, which is now available commercially.

The first site to go live was Madiston’s own business, Madiston Lend LoanInvest,(LendLoanInvest.co.uk), a Peer to Peer Lending site offering personal loans in the UK, matching borrowers and lenders online.  Madiston LendLoanInvest is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), one of only a small number of Peer to Peer Lenders with FCA Full Authorisation.

With Peer to Peer Lending, capital may be at risk and your money, whilst lent out, is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.