Pension fund-owned lender Fiduciam has announced a major investment deal with invoice finance platform MarketInvoice, setting a new milestone in UK peer-to-peer finance.
MarketInvoice is one of the UK’s leading peer-to-peer finance platforms. It allows businesses to raise short-term working capital by selling outstanding invoices direct to investors. Nearly £350m has been traded across the platform to date.
Fiduciam will initially deploy funds to purchase around £50m of invoices per year, with additional funds available to purchase up to £200m of invoices per year.
Johan Groothaert of Fiduciam said:
“We are pleased to provide an important additional funding facility over the MarketInvoice platform during this period of scarce bank credit. We’re excited to help UK businesses accelerate their growth through MarketInvoice.
“MarketInvoice carries numerous benefits over other forms of peer-to-peer investments. The loans are short-duration meaning there is no reliance on a secondary market, and because investors take ownership of the invoice, the loans are well secured in cases of default.”
Anil Stocker, Co-founder and CEO of MarketInvoice said:
“For centuries only banks could access outstanding invoices as an investable asset, but for the first time we’ve made the asset class available to private investors and investment institutions, now including international pension funds - which in total represent over $30 trillion in assets under management – following the deal with Fiduciam.
“Our investment proposition is different from other peer-to-peer lenders as the loans are short-term, this means we have a track record of thousands of successfully matured loans – our model is the most proven in alternative finance.
“Our partnership with Fiduciam means they join a growing list of MarketInvoice investors that also includes the British Business Bank and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as well as private investors, hedge funds, family offices and pension funds. The funds will enable us to help even more UK business accelerate their growth.”
How MarketInvoice works: UK businesses turning over £250k+ per year can apply to MarketInvoice. If accepted following a credit assessment, the business can upload invoices for sale to investors. MarketInvoice will set the advance rate and price (both according to risk scoring) and investors have the opportunity to buy up portions as small as 1% of individual invoices. When the invoice is paid, investors have their capital returned plus a discount fee. Nearly £350m of invoices have been traded across the platform since launch in 2011, with more than £200m in the last 12 months alone.