P2P Money Blog

Unique peer to peer lending platform, Crowdstacker, is launching an opportunity to lend to Amicus Finance Plc (“Amicus”), offering investors 5.67% annual interest over a term of just 18 months - but investor’s need to be quick because this early-bird interest rate is only available until Friday 6^th November.

The borrower, Amicus, is a leading specialist lender with a strong presence in the short term property lending sector providing solutions for commercial and private borrowers.

Regular interest payments to suit income investors

The 5.67% interest rate on the Amicus loan is available to ‘early bird’ investors before November 6^th. After this date, the interest rate will be 5.43%.  Interest is paid quarterly to meet demand for income from investors.

The minimum investment is £1,000 and the offer investment closes on December 11^th.

According to Amicus, demand for short term property lending has grown from around £1.4billion in 2013 to an estimated £3billion annually today.* Many traditional banks have withdrawn from the short term lending sector to focus on standardised long term loans, enabling specialist alternative firms such as Amicus to rapidly grow their market share by offering high quality borrowers a faster and more efficient service.

Amicus’s property loan portfolio is currently made up of 90% residential properties and 10% commercial properties, with 70% located in London or the South East. Its loans are repaid, on average, in 8.5 months and it typically lends between £50,000 and £5 million. It won Bridging Lender of the Year at the Bridging and Commercial Awards, and has lent more than £500million in 800 loans over the past six years.**

Crowdstacker positions itself differently to other P2P firms owing to the comprehensive due diligence process borrowers must undergo before being accepted onto its platform.

Amicus went through several stages of quantitative and qualitative assessment undertaken by Crowdstacker’s team of experienced professionals from the accountancy, legal and investment sectors.

Amicus is only the third loan opportunity offered by Crowdstacker since its launch earlier in 2015. Crowdstacker has ruled out more than 30 other potential firms because they did not meet its strict lending criteria.

Karteek Patel, CEO of Crowdstacker, said: “We start our due diligence process where other platforms stop. We offer the innovation, speed and flexibility of peer to peer lending, but combined with a highly selective approach to the borrowers we accept on our platform, and underpinned by the robust due-diligence practices one would expect from a major accountancy firm.

“Most of our customers are looking to diversify their investments, but they are also quite cautious and only want to lend to financially solid businesses. Amicus has a top level management team, exposure to a very strong market, and has only lost 0.15% of capital on its loans over 6 years. We think that makes Amicus an extremely attractive opportunity for those looking to earn a market-beating return over the next 18 months.”

Amicus CEO John Jenkins said: “By lending to Amicus, investors are provided with an exciting opportunity to receive a market beating return by sharing in our success in the fast growing short term property lending market. As our loans are secured against property in the same way as a mortgage, and we take personal guarantees from directors, we have an extremely low default rate and therefore can offer investors a high degree of security.”

Other current opportunities on Crowdstacker

Crowdstacker, is also running a second round raise for Quanta Group, offering the same 6.8% rate of return, with quarterly interest payments, which enticed lenders to invest over £700k at the start of this summer. The opportunity has been reopened for a number of reasons including in response to requests from existing investors to increase their investments. It is looking to secure further funding to be used to purchase run-down UK properties and refurbish them for immediate resale.

Finance raised from the first round has already been successfully deployed, with the funds being used to buy properties that have now been valued for resale at more than 10% higher than the purchase price.

As with the first round raise, money lent to Quanta Group will be secured in a number of ways including security over the portfolio of properties purchased, currently un-invested cash segregated in a separate bank account, and overseen by an independent FCA regulated administrator. Quanta Group cannot drawdown any profits itself before first ensuring that there is always enough capital to repay lenders their original investments.

John Pybus, an investor in the initial Quanta raise, explains why he was inspired to put his money in: “The beauty of this opportunity to lend money to a property refurbishment business is that you get to invest your money for an excellent rate of return, but Quanta does the hard work. It’s not like stocks and shares, which are harder to understand. You can see property, and you can see where the value has been added when it has been repaired and updated. The potential to make money is more obvious.”

Risk warning

Your capital is at risk if you lend to businesses. Lending through Crowdstacker is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. For more information please see our full risk warning https://crowdstacker.com/risk-warning.

Crowdstacker Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (frn. 648742).