P2P lenders received £7m crowdfunding boost in 2019
PEER-TO-PEER lenders raised more than £7m to boost their platforms through crowdfunding last year.
Analysis of campaigns run on crowdfunding platform Seedrs, by Peer2Peer Finance News, found £7.4m of equity funding for P2P platforms was raised in 2019.
This is down from last year when more than £10m was raised.
The biggest raise of the year was by CapitalRise, which exceeded its £1.5m target on its first equity crowdfunding campaign, raising £2.27m in just three weeks during April.
The property investment platform said it will use the funds raised to expand its team and invest in marketing activities, in order to scale up the business and reach its £100m cumulative lending target.
This was followed by Assetz Capital, which raised £1.8m and CrowdProperty, which raised £1.1m.
Other major fundraises include an £800,000 raise for British Pearl, £780,000 for Asset Exchange, and £750,000 for The House Crowd.
Meanwhile, there has also been a wave of institutional interest coming into the sector that surpasses the crowdfunding campaigns.
MarketFinance (formerly known as MarketInvoice) gained £26m in equity funding through a fundraise led by minority stakeholder Barclays and Santander’s InnoVentures fintech fund.
Growth Street completed a £10m institutional funding round led by existing investors Merian Chrysalis Investment Company in June to improve the platform’s credit decision systems and expand its sales team.
Zopa and Funding Circle have also taken part in new securitisations this year.
Zopa announced its third and largest securitisation to date earlier this month, with a valuation of £244.7m.
Funding Circle undertook its sixth securitisation of loans in November, taking the total value of £1bn across all its placings.