When multiple business owner Lance Green wanted to re-finance a lifestyle property, his first instinct was to approach his commercial bank. But with the COVID-19 crisis in full swing, the bank had little appetite for new lending arrangements. So instead, Lance turned to peer-to-peer lending platform, Zagga.
Offering a range of personal, residential, commercial and rural loans, Zagga matches credit-worthy borrowers to committed investors. As Lance discovered, the whole borrowing process is surprisingly simple and convenient.
“The process of borrowing with Zagga was excellent. This was the first time that we arranged the borrowing without going through a broker.”
With flexible lending criteria, larger loan sizes and a case-by-case approach, Zagga is able to help more borrowers than traditional lenders. The process is completely transparent: Zagga’s bespoke grading system assigns a Credit Assessment Score to each loan, so interest rates differ from borrower to borrower, and loan to loan.
In Lance’s case, Zagga’s proposed terms and interest rates were attractive enough that he decided to take out a further loan. He and his partner owned a block of land in Waikato that they wanted to develop into an eco-lodge. With Zagga’s help that development is now underway.
And when COVID-19 took its toll on their lifestyle vacation company, Viaggio, it was to Zagga that Lance and his partner turned for interest relief.
“When you take a $2m dollar international bespoke travel business that ended overnight - the support was absolutely necessary. Bill Calder (Zagga’s General Manager of Credit Risk) was very responsive. He fully understood the challenges that we were facing.
Overall, the advice and structure put in place by Bill took into account the borrowings and all the business challenges we are facing with our business, which was significantly effected by COVID-19 and Lockdown.”
Peer-to-peer lending is still relatively under-used in New Zealand. But now that Lance has experienced the Zagga borrowing process, he can see that peer-to-peer lending has a significant place in the market.
Lance heartily recommends anyone looking to secure a loan for their project to investigate the process for themselves. And when asked whether he would consider taking out a loan through Zagga again, the answer is an emphatic…
“Absolutely!”
