Seedrs sees record activity on secondary market following variable pricing changes

Seedrs has seen record activity on its secondary market since introducing variable pricing.

In August, the crowdfunding platform made changes to allow sellers to list their shares at either a premium or a discount of 10, 20 or 30 per cent, relative to the mark-to-market share price.

Prior to this, investors were only able to sell shares on the Seedrs secondary market at the set price.

As a result of the change, Seedrs saw the highest volume and largest value of share lots ever listed and the total number and total value of share lots traded rose by almost 20 per cent compared to the average numbers in the January to July 2020 markets.

“The introduction of variable pricing is a major step in the continued development of our secondary market and represents an important milestone in our quest to be a full-scale marketplace for private investments,” said Jeff Kelisky, chief executive at Seedrs.

“We wanted to create a better and more flexible experience for investors while continuing to make the process completely hassle-free for business, so I’m delighted to see the popularity of this feature in its market-debut.”

Several P2P lending platforms have been conducting fundraising rounds on Seedrs of late and may benefit from the change to its secondary market.

P2P lender Assetz Capital is currently running a Seedrs equity crowdfunding campaign, which it plans to match alongside the future fund, in order to scale and prepare for lending under the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS).

Last month, European P2P lending platform EstateGuru raised €1,013,000 (£922,786) on Seedrs to fund its plans to expand into several European countries.

And property-backed lender CapitalRise has raised more than £1m to expand its product range and launch a self-invested personal pension wrapper. It also plans to match this with the future fund.