BigCarrots.com Mixes Peer-to-Peer Lending and Corporate Bonds in the United Kingdom

BigCarrots.com, a U.K. based social lending company, is hoping to make consumer-to-business lending more accessible with its new social lending site.

Typically when an individual investor makes a loan to a business or corporation, it happens in the form of a corporate bond. This is a common investment that investors typically purchase as part of mutual funds. An individual investor or a mutual fund manager will purchase a bond from a corporation and then the company will agree to make payments for a set period of time with interest.

In a move that melds investing in corporate bonds and social lending, BigCarrots is hoping to connect individual lenders with corporate borrowers on its new website, BigCarrots.com. Typically with a peer-to-peer lending website, individual investors will make loans to individual borrowers. With BigCarrots.com, individual investors will fund loans to small businesses and companies that want to take out loans.

Investors can lend as little as 25 GBP to companies and companies can apply for unsecured loans of up to 25,000 GBP for 3 to 36 month terms. Lenders can also sell their investments early by reselling their ownership in the loan on a reseller platform. Currently the website only has 34 loans listed to corporations. The company’s FAQ page is rather sparse and doesn’t provide any information about how BigCarrots assesses borrowers for risk.