Flender faced a challenge. The global peer-to-peer lending (P2P) market has grown steadily since 2005, and over $50bn is lent every year. Flender had an ambitious vision to be part of this disruption of the banking industry, however, with a partially built platform, they needed help to bring their dream to reality.
Learn how we helped Flender
"The best thing we did was to outsource the UX design of Flender to Fathom. We only wish we had done it sooner in the development process, which would have saved us a lot of time and money. The end result was great."
Oli Cavanagh Founder and Chief Commercial Officer
Who are Flender?
Flender aspires to make it possible for businesses and consumers to lend and borrow money by linking in with social network connections. There are no lenders’ fees attached, unlike most platforms, but there is a success fee and what the company calls “a small interest margin”.
Flender focuses solely on the SME market, and their lightning-fast acceleration of credit and banking processes allows them to transfer funds to SMEs within 24 hours. No other lender matches this speed.
Flender is open to borrowers from the Republic of Ireland and will expand shortly into the UK. However, it currently has active lenders from 42 countries, including all of Europe, much of North America, Australasia and the Middle East.
What Fathom did
Flender engaged Fathom to create a user experience which matched their vision of a delightful, easy–to–use digital experience
Workshops
Fathom ran a number of workshops with the Flender team to gain their combined insight, and then undertook an extensive body of desk research. This covered the psychology of lending, borrowing within peer–to–peer groups / crowdfunding and community project contexts.
Combined insight
The combined early insight enabled the Fathom team to create a persuasion roadmap for buyers and lenders, which explored the app interface’s required elements.
Usability tests
To test their early user hypotheses, Fathom ran 12 remote and unmoderated usability tests across desktop and mobile for 6 pre–determined competitors’ and comparators’ platforms. Fathom recruited test participants that matched Flender’s target user demographics and task requirements.
Testing analysis
Fathom analysed the testing results, and the user insights gained helped it refine and reframe the priority journey for both borrowers and lenders.
Bespoke content
Notifications, email triggers and bespoke content were created to match the users’ mental model of the lending / borrowing experience, ensuring that the information was understandable with just the right balance of friction to help users take their time and understand the complexity of what they were setting up.
Wireframe delivery
Fathom delivered a suite of annotated wireframes to illustrate all screens for the borrower and lender journeys. The design prioritised clarity and the importance of story – for the borrower in terms of how they could track their funding journey, and for the lender in how they connected with the borrowers’ narratives.
The improved site launched in March 2017 and since then Flender has experienced phenomenal growth.
"As a start-up founder, you need enthusiasm, optimism and a willingness to go through brick walls".
Kris Koik Chief Executive Officer
The outcome
March 2017 - September 2018
€3m
Sales went from zero to nearly €3m in September 2018.
225
225 new jobs created
10.3%
Average interest returned to lenders of 10.3%
What Flender clients say
“We were able to ramp up production quickly with €100,000 from Flender in only a few days. If we had waited for our bank to fund us we would have lost a huge order from ALDI.”
Ronan Keher, Broghies
Spiders Award 2018
International Growth Award
RT @FinTechIreland: Irish #fintech #P2P @FlenderCrowd in @thesundaytimes today. 63% of lenders are in Ireland & average amount invested is…
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