Frequently Asked Questions

Any person or company can be a lender on Linked Finance, but you must meet the following criteria:

a) If you are lending as an individual, you must:

• be over 18 and a have valid passport or driving licence

• have a European Union bank account

b) If you are lending as a company, you must:

• be registered with the Companies Registration Office or equivalent in your relevant jurisdiction.

• have a European Union bank account

There is no cap on the total you can lend to businesses on Linked Finance. You can make bids from €50 to €5,000 on each loan request.

The interest rates available on Linked Finance range from 6% to 17.5% depending on the loan request.

On Linked Finance, you can lend to limited companies, sole traders and partnerships, who are looking for loans of between €5,000 and €300,000.

We review each potential borrower and we only allow businesses to borrow if they have successfully completed a full, rigorous credit evaluation process. We base this process on validating key up-to-date financial information and ensuring the creditworthiness of each borrower posted on the site.

Unlike most marketplace sites for business lending, we do NOT rely solely on third-party credit scores. We believe that relying largely on credit rating agencies for this information would be inappropriate in the context of the Irish market. Their information and risk ratings are often out of date and cannot be relied on as a measurement of current performance.

Instead, we base our credit decisions on up-to-date information relevant to the credit assessment of potential borrowers. We have also devised a grading system for loan requests based on the outcomes of our own credit evaluation process This system determines the interest rate that will apply to each loan request.

When a loan request goes through our rigorous credit evaluation process it is assigned a loan grade based on the results. These grades and relevant interest rates are as follows:

Please note: Loan grades are provided for informational purposes only and they do not constitute investment advice. Use of Autobid may limit your ability to evaluate each individual loan and bids cannot be refunded once they have been placed.

Loan grades are set based on how businesses perform during our credit evaluation process with ‘A+’ grade loans representing the lowest risk. ‘Y’ grade loans are for young businesses that have been trading for less than 24 months.

The grading system gives you another insight into each loan request that you can consider along with the other profile and financial information displayed on the site.

Yes. Linked Finance has helped to provide loans for businesses right across Ireland. As a lender, you might prefer to support businesses from your local area or county when you are making lending decisions. The county that each loan request comes from is clearly displayed on the ‘Live Loans’ page and there is also a filter that you can use to search for past and present loans by ‘County’, ‘Industry’ or ‘Grade’.

First, register as a lender with Linked Finance. Second, transfer funds into your Linked Finance lender account. Once you have registered, you will be taken to My Account every time you log in.

There are two main ways you can lend on Linked Finance:

• Lend quickly and easily using the Autobid tool (see questions 9, 10 and 11).
• Search our ‘Live Loans’ and choose the businesses to which you want to lend by bidding on their loan requests.

If your bid succeeds, money will be transferred from your Linked Finance lender account to the Linked Finance account of the borrower. When the loan is issued to the borrower, you will hold a loan contract. This entitles you to monthly repayments at the interest rate that accompanied the loan request.

The Autobid lending tool allows you to bid automatically on ‘Live Loans’. You can find Autobid in the ‘My Account’ section. It’s on the furthest tab to the right.

This tool is designed for lenders who may be too busy to look at each individual loan request, but who know how much they would like to lend under the various loan grades and terms.

It is perfect for people who want to build their loan book quickly and spread their funds across a wide range of businesses. Creating a diverse portfolio of loans is the key to successful lending on Linked Finance. We always advise new lenders to lend small amounts to a wide range of businesses and never lend too much to any one business. Instead, make loans across many businesses to spread your risk. Autobid is a very effective tool to help you do this.

Loans close as soon as they reach their funding target. This means you have to log-in regularly or you could miss out on lending opportunities that might interest you. Autobid can help you to successfully bid on loans without logging in to your Linked Finance account. It’s easy. Just pick the loan grades you like and select how much you would like to lend across each grade. You can also select different amounts for each term of loan within each loan grade.

For example, if you are only interested in the lowest risk loans, you could set-up your Autobid to lend €50 to every 6-month, A+-grade loan and leave everything else blank. If you wanted a more diverse spread of businesses and levels of return, you can put a range of different loan amounts across all loan grades and the various terms within each one.

Autobid will automatically place bids on your behalf when a loan that meets your criteria appears on the market place. As long as you have sufficient funds in your account, your bid will be placed for you. Even if you don’t have the full amount of your Autobid available, the system will place a bid for whatever funds you have, rounded down to the nearest €50 amount. You can opt out of this feature if you wish.

When a loan request appears on the market place, all Autobids will be placed instantly. The order in which these bids are accepted is based on when you originally activated your Autobid rule for that loan grade and term. Turning off an Autobid will cause you to lose your place in the bidding order.

1. Log in to ‘My Account’

2. Go to the ‘Autobid’ tab

3. Pick the loan grade and hit ‘Edit’

4. Choose your amount for each term in that grade

5. Click the ‘Save’ button.

6. Repeat for all loan grades you want to Autobid on

Please note:

• When you hit ‘Save’, your Autobid rule for that Loan Grade will be active. For example, if you have selected to bid €50 on 36-month, Grade C loans, a bid of €50 will automatically be placed for you the very next time a 36-month, Grade C loan goes live on the marketplace. As long as you have sufficient funds in your account Autobid will keep placing bids automatically, provided the loan has not already been fully funded by other Autobids.

• Autobids can not be refunded, as loans may have closed or other bids may have been rejected as a result. Make sure you are happy to lend the amount you have selected to any business in that loan grade and over that term, before you hit save. Autobids are placed on each loan in the order that lenders first set up the Autobid rule for that loan grade and term. You can edit the amounts that you want to bid at any time. Unless you select ‘No Autobid’, this will not affect your position in the bidding order.

• If you select and save ‘No Autobid’ you are turning off the Autobid rule and your position in the bidding order will be lost. If you set up a new rule for that loan grade and term your bids will be placed after lenders whose Autobid rules have been continually active for that loan grade and term for longer.

• If you have insufficient funds in your Linked Finance account, your Autobid will remain on but bids will not be placed. You won’t lose your place in the bidding order and when you deposit funds your Autobid will start placing bids again as new loan requests become available.

The ‘Live Loans’ section is the most exciting part of the site – it is where the borrowing and lending happens. It shows all of the active loan requests and a selection of previously successful loans. You can find a link to it at the top of every page on our site.

On the ‘Live Loans page you can view the loan requests from borrowers and place bids. If you click on a loan request, it will expand to give you detailed information on that application. You will find a full list of the bids on that loan, the business profile, financial information and there is a section where you can ask the borrower questions.

To make a bid, click on the orange ‘Place a Bid’ button in the top right-hand corner. Type the amount you are prepared to lend and then click ‘Bid Now’.

Once you have done that, you will see your bid posted live on the market.

Linked Finance charges lenders a service fee of 0.1% of the value of all of their outstanding loans at the start of every month. If you are a lender, we deduct this fee from your account on a proportional basis each month when you receive a repayment from a borrower. There are no other fees or charges for lenders.

We clearly understand that this is your money, not ours. The available cash that you have in your Linked Finance account is not actually held online. These funds are held in totally segregated Lenders’ Funds Accounts at AIB and Bank of Ireland. Linked Finance manages these accounts in line with best practice and they do not form part of our assets.

Linked Finance believes it is important to remember that with lending to businesses, there is an element of risk. Some businesses may not be able to fully repay their loan. If this happens, the loan becomes what is known as a bad debt.

All of our borrowers undergo a rigorous credit evaluation process before they post a loan request on Linked Finance.

This process includes the following checks:

1. Credit History – the business must have a good record of managing their finances.

2. Affordability – the business must clearly show that it can comfortably afford the repayments.

3. Stability – we check each borrower’s identity and creditworthiness in detail, using the same business information that all the best financial institutions use. We also validate all their original bank statements and audited financial accounts.

Our experienced credit team review every application in full before it can be posted on Linked Finance. Those businesses that are successful are then assigned a loan grade based on how they have performed during the credit evaluation. This determines the interest rate that will apply to that loan request.

We advise all lenders to spread their money across many businesses in order to reduce their risk. By lending only a small proportion of each business loan, you reduce your exposure. This is a key factor in successful lending on Linked Finance.

We undertake various measures behind the scenes to reduce the likelihood of fraud. We use reputable third-party software to carry out comprehensive identity and credit checks on business directors or partners who want to borrow on Linked Finance.

Once you have registered, you will see the My Account section every time you log in. The first screen you see is a summary of your lending activity, giving you a breakdown of your current funds, how much you have in available cash, how much in bidding and how much is invested. It also shows how much interest you have earned, how much you have lent and how much has been repaid.

If you want more detail relating to the funds you’ve lent, the bids you have placed, your tax statements, your Autobid rules or deposits & withdrawals, you can find this information on the relevant tabs within the ‘My Account’ section.

When your money displays in your Account Summary as a Live Bid, this means the loan is still open for funding or that the loan offer has not yet been accepted by the borrower.

If the borrower accepts the loan offer, the money that was displayed as a Live Bid will transfer to their account and the amount you bid will be shown in the principal outstanding total.

If the borrower decides to withdraw the loan request or not accept the loan offer, your funds will return to your account and become part of the ‘available cash’ total on your account ‘Summary’ tab.

Not necessarily. It may mean that you have Live Bids that haven’t been accepted yet. You can find a summary of your Live Bids in your account summary.

As funds are lent in denominations of €10, you may have a few euros and cents left over.

If you find that loans have fully funded before you have a chance to bid you should make sure that you have not unsubscribed from the daily email alerts that we send when loans go live. Alternatively, you might consider making use of the Autobid tool.

The first repayment you get from a borrower will usually arrive within 30 days of the loan contract being accepted by the borrower.

Yes. Any money you get from borrower repayments is automatically added to your available cash fund. Therefore, you can use it to lend to other borrowers. This allows you to harness the power of compound interest and maximise your returns.

You can withdraw any money in your lender account that you have not currently lent out. Unless you are closing your account, the minimum withdrawal amount is €50. For your first withdrawal, our KYC and AML policies require proof of identity before we can release your funds. The following items are accepted:

1. Proof of Identity: Copy of Passport/Drivers Licence/EU Card.

2. Proof of Address: Financial statement which must be dated within the last 3 months.

You can make four withdrawals from your account per year without incurring a fee, any additional withdrawals will incur a €10 charge. All withdrawal requests should be made via the ‘Deposits & Withdrawals’ tab in your Linked Finance account.

Tax is not currently deducted from your returns on lending through Linked Finance. You will, however, have to file a self-assessed tax return showing the interest you receive from borrowers (see question 26).

For almost all Linked Finance lenders, lending will be an investment activity. As a lender, you get interest without a tax deduction. Interest earned from any of our loans qualifies as unearned income for taxation purposes ie. money earned from investments. You will need to show the interest you receive in each tax year on your self-assessment returns.

To calculate this figure you will be able to download this information from My Account and use it to help you complete your annual self-assessment tax return.

We have developed a comprehensive debt recovery program with a third-party collections agency to manage any defaults on payments by borrowers.

Borrowers who have defaulted will be pursued where possible. Any money recovered will be forwarded to the lenders. The borrower will have to meet the costs of recovery – this is a condition of their loan. If there is a shortfall, all the lenders to that borrower will share the cost of it on a pro-rata basis.

Repayment Example: €100 loan at 8.5% interest over 3 year.

Linked Finance charges lenders’ a service fee of 0.1% of the value of all of their outstanding loans at the start of every month.

Fee Example: €100 loan at 8.5% interest over 3 years.

A borrower can repay a loan early and at any time. In the event of such a transaction, you will receive the remainder of your outstanding principal, less any Linked Finance fees, plus interest accrued until the end of the month in which the loan is repaid.

If a borrower chooses not to accept the offer of a loan, we will return the bid amounts to your account as soon as we process the transaction.

From time-to-time there may be a requirement to adjust the duration, term, amount or other information relating to a loan request. Any such changes will be reflected in the ‘Live Loans’ section.

When you bid on a loan you are bidding at an annualised percentage rate. This is the standard industry way that interest rates are displayed.

Repayments and interest are calculated using amortisation. In simple terms, this means that interest is charged each month and only on the principal outstanding.

Here’s an example.

• You lend €100 at 8.5% on a 12-month fixed rate loan.

• If the loan was repaid in one lump sum at the end of the term, the interest charged would be 8.5% or €8.50.

• Because, however, the loan is being paid back on a monthly basis and the interest is charged on a reducing balance, the total interest charged over the 12 months would be approximately €4.66 and not €8.50.

• You also need to consider the Linked Finance lender fee of 0.1% per month which is also calculated on the reducing balance. In this instance, the fee charged would be about €0.66.

The key to maximising your return is to redeploy your funds into new loans as soon as they are paid back into your Linked Finance account. This will ensure that your money is working as hard as possible as well as diversifying your portfolio and minimising risk.