Assetz Capital reaches £1bn of lending

When we founded Assetz Capital some seven years ago, we always had high ambitions. We wanted to create a new, large-scale source of funding for the thousands of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) and house-builders struggling to get loans approved as a result of the huge losses that banks had made in the financial crisis. There ended up being an immense £35bn reduction in bank lending to our country’s SMEs, holding back growth, and our mission was to help fill that gap.

These issues still exist today; banks have continued to lend behind of demand and have focussed their resources more on the consumer lending markets like personal loans and home mortgages. However, we have had a positive impact on the alternative finance market. New lenders have emerged – and most notably, peer-to-peer finance has evolved to a multi billion pound business. We’re proud to say we are one of the pioneers and leaders in the industry, and what a journey it has been.

In 2013, we set an objective of lending £1bn to businesses and at the beginning, it felt like a huge target, but at the same time achievable given the strength of our team and the size of our investor base. As time went on, and our numbers rose at a rapid rate, we knew that we had something special, and that a target of £1bn was becoming very achievable. We’re pleased to announce that we have now realised that ambition, and we have our introducers to thank for helping us achieve the stunning £1bn milestone.

Over the seven years, we have amassed a network of more than 38,000 retail and institutional investors. We now have a growing number of banks and other financial institutions lending through us alongside retail investors. As our community grows, it enables us to provide even more business owners with the funding that they need to grow, and house builders with the capital required to help tackle the UK’s housing shortage.

We have directly funded the construction of nearly 5,000 new homes since 2013. In the last year alone, we funded the entire cost-to-complete of 1 in every 100 new homes built in in England, which equates to the entirety of that year’s growth in new housing starts.

We’ve also achieved many awards for our huge impact and this year alone ranked highly in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 growth firms list and the Financial Times FT 1000 growth index across the whole of Europe. There are also several more significant milestones and partnerships that we expect to announce in the coming months that will support even greater lending.

Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or you’re new to what we do, we hope you’ll continue on this journey with us as we target the next billion to be lent. Because of you, our intermediaries, we’re able to support the country’s economy and its housing crisis by providing your clients with the capital they need to grow.

Thank you again for your support and we will continue to do our best for you.

Kind regards,
Stuart Law