Asset-backed peer-to-peer lender Ablrate has hired new fintech consultancy Equitivo as the business bids to hike its lending over the next two years.
The consultancy said it will work with Ablrate to create what is says will be the world’s first blockchain-based platform trading private debt globally. The move will connect secondary market investors on a network linking Ablrate and its white label Leeds-based partner Huddle Capital.
Equitivo, with offices in London and Manchester, was set up earlier this month by Andrew Holgate, one of the co-founders of Europe’s largest peer-to-peer lenders Assetz Capital.
Equitivo chief executive Holgate said: “Ablrate has already achieved great success, and we will be helping them take their loan book from £2m per month to £20m.”
A spokesman for the consultancy said it plans to make the loan book jump at Ablrate in two years.
Holgate added: “Equitivo will be taking an active role in helping the company prepare its loan book management for scale as well as implementing technology, operational and performance strategies.”
Henley-on-Thames-based Ablrate has agreed £44m in loans, with £33m traded on its secondary market, since it was launched in 2014. The firm was initially launched to service the aircraft leasing sector, the platform quickly grew to finance other asset backed transactions from a bottling plant to a waste management park .
The platform, led by founder and chief executive David Bradley-Ward, said over the last three years it has boosted revenues to £1.7m from £100,000.
Bradley-Ward added: “We have dedicated this year to scaling the business. By bringing in a dedicated consultancy which has a successful track record in growing P2P businesses, it is a logical way to achieve our goals quicker.”
Holgate said: “Blockchain has the possibility to offer interesting solutions to many financial market problems. One such issue is that of investors using multiple platforms with multiple different systems and login criteria. We will be working on implementing a standardised way, using blockchain, as a solution and to manage transactions easily and securely.”
Holgate helped set up Manchester-based Assetz Capital in 2013, and since then it has lent over £600m to small and medium-sized businesses over this period, and currently has more than 100,000 registered private investors signed to its platform.
Assetz Capital said the former banker left the lender with “immediate effect” to “pursue new external opportunities”, last September.
Ablrate is in the middle of a £350,000 cash call among private investors on crowdfunding site Crowdcube, first announced last month.
