Sky news are reporting that Metro Bank is in talks to buy the Peer to Peer Lender, Ratesetter.
Its not April 1st so there must be a degree of credibility to the story, but a Bank, ‘beset by problems during a troubled 12 month period’ contemplating buying a P2P lender would be a very courageous move.
During the Covid-19 driven crisis, lenders (investors), across the Ratesetter platform are only receiving 50% of their interest, the balance going into the provision fund, for the benefit of all investors.
Their borrower portfolio, much of which will be fixed rate, will be subject to considerable erosion as a consequence of the pandemic.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and I suspect other P2P platforms will be watching closely.
and today, 3rd August 2020, it’s being reported the deal is done and Metro Bank have now acquired RateSetter.