Briefs: Lending Crowd joins the NZ P2P market, Suncorp prices 5-year senior debt, AFG mortgage index
New Zealand's Financial Markets Authority has granted a licence to Lending Crowd to operate a peer-to-peer lending business, altfi news reports. Lending Crowd joins Harmoney, LendMe and Squirrel Money in the NZ P2P market. Lending Crowd will target the small business market with secured loans of NZ$2000 to NZ$200,000, as well as personal loans. The company's managing director Wayne Croad said he was keen to expand the business into Australia. Suncorp Bank finalised pricing for a five-year senior unsecured debt transaction of A$750 million, late on Tuesday 13 October. The transaction was upsized from the $500 million funding sought at launch earlier that day. The transaction consisted of an A$550 million floating rate tranche priced at 125 basis points over three-month BBSW and a $200 million fixed rate tranche priced at 125bps over semi-quarterly coupon matched asset swap. The Australian Finance Group's mortgage index for the three months to 30 September 2015 was published yesterday, showing the total value of home loans processed by its brokers was $14.16 billion, an increase of nearly 16 per cent on the same period last year. Owner occupiers changing properties accounted for 34 per cent of loans, up from 28 per cent in the June quarter. The pricing and policy changes made by the majors saw the non-majors regain two per cent market share in the investor space over the quarter.