‘Tis the season to rebrand (for secured business lenders). Assetz Capital, one of Europe’s biggest P2P business lenders, has unveiled a new website and brand in the hope of optimising and simplifying its user experience.
The secured business lending platform has already revealed that its Innovative Finance ISA offering will be launched for automated accounts next week, and will include manual loan investment early next year. Assetz was fully authorised in September, paving the way for the launch of its IFISA.
“This has been a transformational year and we are ending on a high with a refreshed brand and website, new headquarters in Manchester and the launch of our ISA,” said founder and CEO Stuart Law. “Our results across both borrowing and investing speak for themselves.”
Meanwhile, fellow asset-backed lender Ablrate is planning the launch of a new user interface in January, in tandem to a product launch. The firm is launching a new product under the title “portfolio loans”.
Split into two types, “single” and “diversified”, these loans are designed to broaden the appeal of the platform. The single company portfolio loans will target borrowers who require the flexibility of being able to access multiple loan tranches in multiple draw downs, offering investors exposure to the same company time and again. The diversified portfolio loans are a similar proposition, with loans issued in tranches according to demand, but with investors automatically diversified across loans to many companies within a distinct portfolio. Lenders in the latter portfolio will maintain “the bilateral legal nature” of all loans on the platform.
“We have spent a considerable time looking at how Portfolio Loans will work,” commented Alex Benger, Ablrate’s business development manager. “We have utilised our existing technology to make allocating to Portfolio Loans and withdrawing from loans functionally simple. These types of loans will unlock a large amount of new borrower business for our lenders and we are looking forward to launching our first one soon.”
