FundingKnight is a crowdlending company that takes applications from trust funds, companies, LLPs and small self-administered pension schemes. The company is run through a website that matches people wanting to earn a better return on their savings with small British Businesses seeking to widen their access to funding.
Through the FundingKnight platform lenders should receive an average rate of 11.2% and FundingKnight feel that the peer to business platform should be a welcome ingredient in any investment portfolio seeking to achieve a balanced return.
FundingKnight offers loans of between £25,000 and £100,000 for periods of up to three years. This funding is only available to UK based businesses registered at Companies House and they must have at least 2 years’ trading history and accounts. FundingKnight recently passed its first £1m worth of lending after arranging over 1200 transactions on its loan exchange.
From their £1.5m investment GLI Funding will receive a 20% equity stake in the company and CEO Geoff Miller, who has joined the FundingKnight board, said “This investment is a perfect fit within our strategy of focusing on niche lending to SMEs and adding further geographical diversification to our business by expanding further in Continental Europe and the UK. We are delighted that Graeme and his team have chosen to partner with us and GLIF looks forward to building on this investment by also participating in new lending and in FundingKight’s Loan Exchange.”
Investors are able to register on the FundingKnight website for free and can lend from as little as £25 to British businesses. Each business loan is made up from many parts, which each are owned by an individual investor. Investors can build portfolios and spread their money across a number of different business loans if they wish.
Graeme Marshall, CEO and founder of FundingKnight, commented: “We are excited to have GLI Finance as a significant investor and partner in our business. Crowd lending is set to become a global market and, in the UK alone, crowd lending has now passed £0.5 billion. There is excellent complementarity between GLIF’s other loan platforms and our business and we look forward to working with Geoff and his wider team.”
This investment from GLI Finance shows how popular and significant crowd lending is becoming in the world of finance and it looks to only be getting bigger.
