Borro
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| Private Listed | |
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Founded | August 2008 |
| Founder | Paul Aitken |
| Headquarters | London, UK and United States |
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Key people
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John Allbrook, CEO |
| Services | Secured loans, Luxury Asset Loans, Collateral loan, |
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Number of employees
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55 (2014) |
| Website | www |
Borro is a UK-US-based online secured lender that offers loans secured on luxury assets. The company provides loans allowing clients to use luxury assets such as fine art, luxury and classic cars, jewellery, watches, antiques, fine wine, luxury handbags, memorabilia and other valuables. The company has offices in London, New York and Los Angeles.
As of September 2017 Borro has written over $397,000,000 in lending and its average loan size on luxury assets is £55,000.
Borro was initially established with the aim of modernizing the image of asset-based lending, transforming it into a discreet, convenient and transparent way to release equity from assets over the Internet rather than on a High Street. The service was launched in the UK in August 2008.
Borro is a privately held finance company and was first funded by European Founders and partners Eden Ventures. In 2011 the asset lender received two sets of funding, firstly a £7,500,000 investment from Augmentum Capital in April 2011, then Octopus in a deal that would allow business to "meet the demands of services". In March 2014 Borro raised £67,000,000 from Victory Park Capital.
In October 2014 Borro announced it had reached the milestone of lending £100,000,000 in loans to individuals and small businesses. Also, as a result of the average loan values increasing from £7,000 to £15,000 from October 2013, Borro discontinued loans of less than £3,000.
In 2012 Borro launched its services to the USA market, offering a "unique" alternative to liquidity lending and making quick cash available to individuals and businesses. By April Borro had reached over $1,000,000 on its loan book in the US. The March 2014 fundraise of $112,000,000 million in debt financing allowed the company to increase its lending capacity to $2,000,000 per asset.
In June 2014, Borro expanded its services further in the USA market, opening in California. The company explained it was vital to open an office in Los Angeles due to demand from partners and to gain a further understanding of the market in that area.
In February 2015, Borro raised an additional $19,500,000 in funding to fuel rapid growth in the UK and US. The funding round was led by new investor OurCrowd and existing investor Rocket Internet with existing investors Canaan Partners, Eden Ventures, and Augmentum Capital also participating. This round pushed Borro's total capital raised to over $200,000,000.
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Wikipedia