Last year, the pandemic continued to affect us and impact our business performance. Despite these circumstances, we were able to achieve strong growth once again and strengthen our team with additional specialists.
The crowdfunding campaign with our customers was extremely successful, demonstrating their trust in Cashare. With this strong foundation, we are starting the new year with complete confidence. Another challenging year is drawing to a close, and it hasn't quite fulfilled people's expectations. After 2020, we all hoped that we could soon put the pandemic behind us, especially thanks to the new vaccine. Unfortunately, the coronavirus hasn't yet left our lives, and periods of recovery have repeatedly been followed by stricter measures and the fear of another lockdown.
Looking back at 2021
The effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt at Cashare. Several project plans are on hold until after the crisis when they can finally be implemented. The SME financing sector has also not yet recovered significantly. We continue to see a certain reluctance among companies, who are reluctant to invest during times of uncertainty. Liquidity loans are also being granted less frequently, as many companies are still receiving emergency loans from the government or lack the creditworthiness to obtain further credit. These are cases where it is unclear to us how these companies will ever repay their emergency loans, and therefore, unfortunately, they do not qualify for sufficient creditworthiness with us. Nevertheless, we anticipate a surge in pent-up demand for financing among SMEs once the pandemic ends, and we are ideally positioned to meet this demand.
Fortunately, we are also seeing positive developments. Overall, loan demand has increased compared to 2020. It is becoming clear that individuals and businesses are increasingly able to adapt to the crisis. The mortgage-backed loan segment, in particular, continues to experience strong growth. Personal loans are also growing slightly, although not yet at the same rate as before the crisis. On the investor side, the investment shortage remains significant, making investment in a loan portfolio an attractive alternative in the fixed income sector. Cashare was thus able to further increase its growth in 2021 compared to the previous year, achieving a respectable 50% growth, up from 45% in 2020. This once again demonstrates that the broad range of loans offered, as well as the well-diversified investor base, are key pillars of Cashare's success. Furthermore, we have remained committed to our rigorous and proven credit assessment process and do not prioritize growth at all costs. As a fintech pioneer, we can draw on over 14 years of experience and successfully meet current challenges.
Cashare's growth has also allowed us to further strengthen our team with specialists over the past year. Focusing on IT, we've added another internal software architect, data specialists, and a business analyst. This reinforcement will significantly support our future developments for the benefit of our customers. We've also strategically expanded our sales team, enabling us to better serve and support our key accounts.
Crowdinvesting campaign
A particular highlight was our crowdfunding campaign in November. In this campaign, we exclusively offered our customers the opportunity to participate in Cashare via participation certificates, starting from an investment of just CHF 350. This proved to be a great success, attracting over 200 new shareholders. As the only crowdlending platform, we enable our customers to directly participate in Cashare's success and growth. This is something very close to our hearts, as we ultimately owe our success to our customers. Cashare remains the only major platform in Switzerland that is independent and has no strategic investors with their own interests. On the contrary, this allows us to focus entirely on the interests of our customers, who are also co-owners of Cashare. Furthermore, we were honored by the trust our customers placed in us as investors, because who knows Cashare and our services better than they do? It is also particularly gratifying that many of our early investors have opted to invest in participation capital, which acknowledges our continuous development and their customer satisfaction.
Outlook
With the strong and broad base of our investors, as well as a motivated team, we look forward to the new year with great optimism and excitement. We can't wait to fully commit to implementing our projects and further expanding our offerings and customer service. Initial results will be visible soon in the new year, and many more are to follow.
We sincerely wish you a happy and healthy new year with many joyful moments.
Your Cashare Team
Michael Borter
