Squirrel raises $3.5 million to help with expansion

The offer, through the Snowball Effect platform, is the largest amount raised by a New Zealand crowd-funder but it was shy of the $4.97 million maximum target set.

The offer had originally only been offered to Squirrel’s database but when only $500,000 of the $1.97 million available to retail investors had been taken up at the end of March, it was made public.

The money raised from the crowd will cover restructuring and offer costs, the development of a new online mortgage application process, a Squirrel Money app, and seeding the Squirrel Money reserve fund, which protects investors in the peer-to-peer platform from defaults.

Squirrel also plans to put $2 million into its Squirrel Money underwriting facility to enable it to process loans more quickly.