Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP has advised UK consumer loan platform Lendable on its first £100 million funding program from New York-based Waterfall Asset Management. The £100 million will be invested in loans made over Lendable's platform, which offers loans to prime and near-prime consumers in the UK.

The capital deployed by Waterfall represents one of the biggest ever institutional investments in loans originated through a European fintech platform and comes amid growing interest from US investors.

Cadwalader is a leader in the European securitization and Fintech space. In the past year alone, the firm advised the arranger of a securitization backed by £130m of loans to UK SMEs originated on the Funding Circle platform -- the first public, rated securitization of marketplace loans in Europe. Cadwalader also advised the arranger of a securitization backed by £150m of loans to UK consumers originated on the Zopa platform.

“Cadwalader is widely acknowledged as the go-to firm globally for its work in helping to develop the alternative finance and fintech securitization market across Europe,” said Jeremiah Wagner, a partner in the firm’s Capital Markets Practice in London. “This important transaction for Lendable is an example of the importance of institutional funding through a loan origination program for the fast-growing marketplace lending industry.”

Lendable is an online lending platform based in Shoreditch, East London. Waterfall, founded in 2005 by two former Merrill Lynch bankers, specializes in investing in high-yield asset-backed securities or loans.

The deal was led by Wagner and included Capital Markets associate Patrick Leftley and Corporate associate Elin Gosby.