Harmoney Restructures Fees to Lenders Following 2015 Changes to Borrower Fees
Auckland, 12 May 2016
The leading peer-to-peer lending marketplace Harmoney has announced changes to its fee structure for Lenders, effective from 13 June 2016. The changes follow the restructuring of fees to Borrowers in December 2015, at which time the company significantly reduced the Platform Fee for all Borrowers.
Harmoney founder and joint CEO Neil Roberts says, “As a platform that provides services to Borrowers and Lenders, Harmoney is the pioneer of the Kiwi P2P lending industry and the largest P2P lending marketplace in New Zealand. In order to ensure the sustainability and longevity of the platform and maintain the value we deliver to Lenders and Borrowers, we are now making changes to the fee structure to Lenders following the decision late last year to adjust our fees for Borrowers.”
For new loans made from 13 June 2016 Harmoney has removed its Service Fee (1.25% of the principal and interest payments collected on each repayment, including any repayment as a result of a rewritten loan). Instead a Lender Fee will be charged only on interest, and is charged on a sliding scale that recognises the amount Lenders have invested through the platform – the greater the lending, the lower the fees. The interest-only application of the Lender Fee means Harmoney has to keep delivering returns to receive this fee.
The Harmoney platform is currently delivering returns to Retail Lenders that exceed those originally targeted. Retail Lenders are enjoying an average Realised Annual Return (RAR) of 13.05%.
Harmoney’s RAR has been published since December 2015 at a platform level, within the market statistics page, and as an individual return, within each Lender’s dashboard. Harmoney has the tenure and scale to provide an actual realised return with almost two years of tenure and $250 million in lending.
The new fee structure will allow Harmoney to continue to invest in growth, which will drive more loan value for all Lenders. In just 20 months of operation, Harmoney has:
- raised $30 million in working capital and invested substantially in the platform infrastructure and improvements;
- assessed more than $2 billion in loan applications;
- facilitated $250 million in lending;
- paid $20 million in interest to Lenders;
- processed more than 7,500,000 transactions.
Harmoney says thousands of New Zealanders have contributed to its success, and the team will continue to work hard to justify the faith and support of those who use the platform.
Lender Fees and Charges at 13 June 2016 can be viewed at www.harmoney.co.nz/how-it-works/fee-changes-for-lenders
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About Harmoney
Harmoney is an online direct personal lender that operates across Australia and New Zealand providing customers with unsecured personal loans that are easy to access, competitively priced (using risk-adjusted interest rates) and accessed 100% online.
Harmoney’s purpose is to help people achieve their goals through financial products that are fair, friendly, and simple to use.
Harmoney’s proprietary digital lending platform, Stellare™, facilitates its personalised loan product with applications processed and loans typically funded within 24 hours of acceptance by the customer. Stellare™ applies a customer’s individual circumstance to its data-driven, machine learning credit scorecard to deliver automated credit decisioning and accurate risk-based pricing.
Business fundamentals
- Harmoney provides risk based priced unsecured personal loans of up to $70,000 for three, five or seven year periods to customers across Australia and NZ
- Its direct-to-consumer and automated loan approval system is underpinned by Harmoney’s scalable Stellare™ proprietary technology platform
- A large percentage of Harmoney’s originations come from 3R™ (repeat) customers
- Harmoney is comprised of a team of ~80 full-time employees across Australia and New Zealand, over half of whom comprise engineering, data science and product professionals
- Harmoney is funded by a number of sources including two “Big-4” bank warehouse programs across Australia and New Zealand and a facility from M&G Investments