Assetz Capital has added a new private fund for institutional investors, in collaboration with a specialist marketplace lending fund manager.
The fund gives institutional investors and family offices an additional and dedicated channel to invest in loans on the Assetz Capital marketplace. Established in Luxembourg, the private fund is eligible to institutional, professional or other well- informed investors, and will use an existing, cost-efficient fund structure.
Investors in the fund will participate in a portfolio of short-term UK loans to SMEs originated by Assetz Capital – with around 90 per cent coming from regional geographies outside London. All loans are backed by real estate security and other forms of guarantees, providing significant downside protection for investors. Assetz Capital has lent over GBP0.75 billion to UK businesses since 2013, with investors earning over GBP75 million in gross interest.
A highly innovative, well-established, FCA-authorised fund manager will act as the investment manager for the fund. It will carry out continual data-driven due diligence of the Assetz Capital platform, in addition to optimising the fund’s investment allocation criteria and is already actively managing other funds investing in the Assetz Capital marketplace.
Assetz Capital’s specialist focus on small-balance, property-secured lending in regional UK markets and its expert team enable it to originate loans which provide a long-term sustainable income yield with low volatility and low correlation to mainstream asset classes.
Stuart Law, CEO at Assetz Capital, says: “This new fund launch provides a new long- term funding structure to further increase the scale of our marketplace and our lending support to UK SMEs. It further expands the universe of investors that can access the Assetz Capital marketplace, alongside our valued retail lenders.
“We believe that our small-balance, real estate-backed loans can provide an additional, well-diversified source of sustainable income to an investor’s portfolio. At the same time, it allows investors to diversify and more conservatively position their real estate investment exposure.
“Assetz Capital is a marketplace where British businesses can access capital, and investors can participate in hundreds of SME loans at the click of a button. This is the first in a number of new institutional and retail funding initiatives that we will be announcing in the coming months as we continue our mission to create one of the UK’s leading sources of secured income for all classes of investors.”
