Mr. Peter O'Mahony:

Loyalty is the greatest interest of LinkedFinance. The reason we called our organisation LinkedFinance was that we wanted the borrower to link with the customers. Our average borrower at the moment has 186 lenders. For a €30,000 loan, the average person bids €150 to lend to that business and, on average, between 180 and 200 people will be involved in each loan. As the Senator mentioned, it is a great opportunity for people to start being loyal and provide support to a business. Let us say a loan goes live today; the first repayment will be due in a month's time. We have lent to a couple of butchers, and one of these, who had a loan that went live last July, very cleverly said "Thank you for supporting me on the loan. The first repayment will go through tomorrow and, by the way, if you want to pop in to pick up any meat for your barbecue this weekend, there is a 20% discount for every lender who has lent to me." That butcher had a great take-up on his offer. Such lending creates a bond. It is important that the lender likes the borrower, but it is also important that the borrower likes the lender. Let us say that butcher was going through a tough time and the time for his monthly payment is fast approaching; he will decide not to bounce a cheque because the lenders are also customers, and the last thing that butcher wants is dissatisfied customers. We feel that the link between the lender and the borrowers is key.

With regard to the business going forward, members of the public lend through the platform and by creating a link we feel that we are driving defaults virtually down to zero. In our industry the number of defaults is typically very low. For example, Zopa has lent nearly €200 million in the past three years and its default rate is 0.3% on all of the loans. That is down to the community effect, whereby borrowers suddenly feel very responsible in terms of repaying the money.