08:47 am, 19 February 2017
New Zealand's largest peer to peer lender has opened its doors in Australia with A$200 million to lend. Harmoney launched in New Zealand in late 2014, and since then has made over $410m of loans, with some of the money coming from ordinary investors seeking a better return on their money than they can get at the bank.
Read more at Stuff.co.nz.
13:26 pm, 21 December 2016
New Zealand peer-to-peer lending marketplace Harmoney has been awarded a Canstar 5 Star Award for the second year running for its unsecured A Credit Rating personal loan.
Joint CEO and founder of Harmoney, Neil Roberts, said the company is extremely proud to receive recognition from Canstar as one of only three providers in its category to receive the 5-star rating.
"The recognition that we have achieved in several areas – including a 5 out of 5 Overall Satisfaction Rating based on 3,521 ratings from actual borrowers – demonstrates that New Zealanders want a better way to fund the things that they want, and they are starting to question the benefits they get from traditional providers."
Read more at Scoop.
17:38 pm, 11 November 2016
New Zealand should copy Britain's blueprint to grow peer-to-peer lending, Harmoney founder Neil Roberts told the country's first ever "fintech" conference.
The reward would be a $10 billion a year non-bank lending industry with lower costs for borrowers and higher returns for investors, he said.
Read more at Stuff.co.nz.
00:00 am, 7 November 2016
Online auction site Trade Me has bought $670,000 of shares in peer-to-peer lender Harmoney Corp to keep its stake at 14.4 percent.
The Wellington-based company bought about 1.3 million series B shares at 51c apiece, matching the price paid by Heartland Bank when it boosted its stake with a $4 million investment last month. Harmoney joint chief executive Neil Roberts, the company's biggest shareholder, said the investment will support the firm's growth.
Read more at NBR.
09:40 am, 20 September 2016
Young people who want to go into business are facing a looming funding crisis thanks to falling home ownership.
It's not just their problem though, says Neil Roberts from peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Harmoney. It amounts to an impending national innovation crisis.
"One of the biggest barriers for budding businesspeople is reliance on mortgage funding."
Read more at Stuff.co.nz.
00:00 am, 16 August 2016
Heartland Bank's stake in peer-to-peer lender Harmoney is helping it offer more personal loans. For the year to June 30 Heartland Bank made a $54.2 million profit, a 12.5 per cent increase on the same period last year. Personal lending increased 55 per cent to $19.3m, including those loans offered through the Harmoney platform. It has a 10 per cent stake in the peer-to-peer operator.
Read more at Stuff.co.nz.
09:44 am, 13 July 2016
Technology is enabling new and different investment opportunities, giving Kiwis the chance to diversify beyond their obsession with rental property and more recently Kiwi Saver investing.
With this change and the pace of it leads to questions and concern for not only investors but for regulators.
Read more at NZ Herald.
16:55 pm, 12 July 2016
Harmoney has claimed to be the first in the world to use peer-to-peer lending for 'unforeseen hardship' on loans, the company reports. Its Payment Protect offering is a 'repayment waiver' that can protect against unexpected events that can affect loan repayment, such as death, terminal illness, disability or redundancy.
Read more at Tech Day bizEDGE.
00:00 am, 16 May 2016
Peer-to-peer lending marketplace Harmoney has appointed current director David Flacks as its Chair, and Stuart McLean will join the board as a director.
Mr Flacks was initially appointed an independent director of the Harmoney board in May 2014. He is a former top corporate lawyer with more than 30 years of commercial, governance, and strategic experience. Mr Flacks was a partner of Bell Gully from 1987 to 2014, except for four years in the 1990s as general counsel and company secretary of Carter Holt Harvey.
Read more at National Business Review.
11:49 am, 19 April 2016
Last week, Fairfax Media revealed that Sequoia Capital, which over the years has invested in the early stages of some of history's most successful technology companies – think Apple, Google and Oracle – led a $10 million funding round for 90 Seconds, an Auckland based corporate-video marketplace.
Read more at Sydney Morning Herald.
00:00 am, 6 April 2016
A technology-driven wave is gaining momentum in financial services and New Zealand banks would do well to hitch a ride, says global advisory giant KPMG. In New Zealand, the most visible representatives of the "fintechs" - innovators using technology to disrupt and transform traditional financial services - have been P2P (peer-to-peer) lenders such as Harmoney, LendMe, Lending Crowd and Squirrel Money. Harmoney, which has attracted institutional funding and shareholders such as Trade Me and Heartland Bank, says on its website it is disrupting the "largely unchallenged and unchanging" banks by "using technology to minimise the cost of intermediation" between borrowers and lenders.
Read more at NZ Herald.
00:00 am, 27 March 2016
Storm clouds are forming over the financial services industry, according to Greg Carroll. "Margins are shrinking. Start-ups and others are attacking the various profit pools. There are increasing burdens of risk and regulation." But there are patches of blue sky, too. Carroll is Accenture's managing director of financial services for Australia and New Zealand, and works with big clients like the Commonwealth Bank. Compared to Europe or North America, Carroll says our institutions are in pretty good shape. "That gives them the chance to do some interesting things with their customers, and innovate." The way the big players choose to respond to new competitors is still playing out. Heartland Bank has taken a stake in peer-to-peer lender Harmoney, and is using the platform to lend out its own cash. Carroll expects to see more of this type of collaboration.
Read more at Stuff.co.nz.
10:53 am, 11 March 2016
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has been world leading in establishing a regulatory framework for peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders to operate in New Zealand. The FMA designed a specific regime for the disruptive new industry, rather than scratching their head with ‘square peg round hole’ syndrome, like other jurisdictions. On the other hand, the New Zealand Inland Revenue has not yet looked to modernise its policy settings to support the FMA, around the taxation of P2P loans in New Zealand.
Read more at Interest.co.nz.
00:00 am, 7 March 2016
Licensing peer-to-peer lenders is a challenge for the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), but the regulations underpinning the sector shouldn't be reviewed until after the industry has been through a downturn, FMA chief executive Rob Everett says. Speaking to interest.co.nz in a Double Shot interview, Everett said a key feature of the fledgling New Zealand peer-to-peer (P2P) landscape is the "sheer variety" of business models. NZ's licensed P2P lending industry was enabled by the Financial Markets Conduct Act, which came into force in 2014 and was described by the Government as a once in a generation shake-up of securities laws.
Read more at Interest.co.nz.
00:00 am, 7 March 2016
Peer-to-peer lending site Harmoney has appointed Contagion to its advertising account after a pitch understood to have also involved Goodfolk and Problem Child. This news comes at a good time for Contagion, which recently also won a decent chunk of the Southern Cross Health Society account, and the agency's managing partner Dean Taylor says his team "jumped at the opportunity" to pitch for the account of the 18-month-old business. Harmoney data from last week showed that the company has surpassed the milestone of $200 million borrowed and lent since the company first launched.
Read more at StopPress.
00:00 am, 16 February 2016
Harmoney Corp Limited, Australasia’s largest and fastest growing peer-to-peer lending marketplace, has confirmed the sale of $8.5m of Series B shares to a US-based investor and UK-based P2P Global Investments PLC (P2PGI). The Series B round values Harmoney at $109m. This development comes as Harmoney moves swiftly towards the milestone of having facilitated loans to creditworthy borrowers totaling nearly $200 million since its launch just 17 months ago.
Read more at Scoop.
09:24 am, 13 February 2016
Harmoney, the first peer to peer lender in New Zealand, is readying for it’s jump over to Australia. While an exact date has yet to be set, Scoop reports that an invite-only beta launch will happen in the next few weeks so Harmoney can work out any bugs before a public release. In December of last year, Harmoney Australia GM Ben Taylor outlined the differences between the Kiwi operation and the Aussie version.
Read more at Crowdfund Insider.
09:22 am, 12 February 2016
Harmoney Corp, New Zealand's first and biggest peer-to-peer lender, has raised $30 million of working capital as it steps up plans to launch in Australia this year, but doesn't anticipate seeking more funds until it's cash-flow neutral. The Auckland-based company this month sold $8.8 million of new shares to Stone Ridge Ventures and P2P Global Investments, taking total funds raised to $30 million. Co-chief executive and its biggest shareholder Neil Roberts told BusinessDesk the company will have to raise more funds at some stage if it's to develop into a large-scale business, but it wants to do so from a position of strength.
Read more at National Business Review.
00:00 am, 12 February 2016
Feb. 12 (BusinessDesk) - Harmoney Corp, New Zealand's first and biggest peer-to-peer lender, has raised $30 million of working capital as it steps up plans to launch in Australia this year, but doesn't anticipate seeking more funds until it's cash-flow neutral. The Auckland-based company this month sold $8.8 million of new shares to Stone Ridge Ventures and P2P Global Investments, taking total funds raised to $30 million. Co-chief executive and its biggest shareholder Neil Roberts told BusinessDesk the company will have to raise more funds at some stage if it's to develop into a large-scale business, but it wants to do so from a position of strength.
Read more at Yahoo Business and Finance.
00:00 am, 12 February 2016
New Zealand peer to peer lenders have hit back at criticism by a former British regulator warning a crash in the sector would make "bankers look like lending geniuses"... Neil Roberts, founder of Harmoney - New Zealand's biggest peer-to-peer lender - refuted the claim that its borrowers were made up of banks rejects. "Harmoney has created a prime book which would be the envy of any banking institution." Roberts said borrowers had to go through a tough vetting process including having to verify their income, home ownership and work status.
Read more at NZ Herald.