Yet another peer-to-peer style lender has emerged to target the small to medium business loan sector. TruePillars provides a platform through which small businesses can apply for loans of A$5000 to $250,000, which are funded by multiple investors.  Loan applications are assessed by an experienced team of former bankers, with help from an algo. A soft launch is already underway, after a somewhat subdued yet straightforward start in Melbourne last week. The business is the work of CEO and co-founder, John Baini. The former corporate banker at NAB in London and, more recently Royal Bank of Scotland, had a chance watch a few lending models up close in the UK, and was impressed by Funding Circle. Here's quick overview of how it will work: The business is set out as a managed investment scheme so that once investors have cleared anti-money laundering checks they are invited to invest their money into a trust account controlled by a professional trust custodian. "The business borrower pays an upfront fee to us which is a percentage of the loan amount which could be between three and five per cent," Baini said. "On the lending side we term loans out to five years, so we're not into this 'emergency money' short-term cash flow lending," he said. "We are really looking for good growth based finance opportunities and to allow the borrower to repay over the reasonable length of time. We're not going to be obsessed with property security as if you get the lending decision right in the first place security shouldn't come into play." "That's a bit of a lost skill in banking - taking the time to look at a business fundamentals and make a decision. Every loan, once we approve it, will go into a marketplace with details about the business.  We won't name them specifically but will say the industry, the region they are in, what they want the money for and so on." Baini said another point of difference was that investors would see 12 months of Dun & Bradstreet information to help them make their decision, even if they were only contributing $50 - the minimum investment allowed by the system. "As soon as we are confident we have a good set of loans in the marketplace we will invite investors to make deposits and bid," he said. Baini said his business model was similar to that of Funding Circle in the UK, which has lent over £1 billion in the last six years. "The average loan size is under £100,000 so that equates to quite a lot of loans and a fair bit of history," he said. Baini added that, on average, each time a business has borrowed from Funding Circle it has increased its headcount by 27 per cent, which translates to almost 3 new staff on average.