Assetz Capital to launch property-only and longer-term accounts
ASSETZ Capital is launching two new investment accounts to capitalise on the surge of demand it has experienced on both the investor and the borrower side.
The peer-to-peer lending platform is expanding its account range to seven offerings, adding a longer-term and a purely property-backed account to its existing 30-day access, quick-access, green-energy, “great British business” and manual loan accounts, it told Peer-to-Peer Finance News.
The longer-term account will offer investors an interest rate of about 4.75 per cent over one-year investments, while the new specialist account, which caters for investors who want to focus exclusively on loans secured against property rather than other assets, will target returns of around five per cent.
The platform also said it may launch temporary rate hike offers on different accounts going forward, following its recent move to ramp up returns on its 30-day access account by half a percentage point for a 90-day window.
The firm’s limited-time offer defied the industry trend of falling returns, with Landbay, Zopa and RateSetter recently lowering their rates to attract new borrowers.
“I guess the difference is that we are not competing with other P2P platforms in terms of rates,” said the firm’s chief executive Stuart Law.
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“We didn’t feel the need to charge borrowers high rates, and wanted to focus on pricing risk correctly to get much larger volumes of high-quality investments.”
This strategy brought a deluge of borrower interest onto the platform, which it now looks to match with a larger pool of investors by widening its account and rate offering.
However, it is also planning to lower returns on its green energy accounts, which currently invest in wind turbine and renewable energy projects, from seven per cent to six per cent over the next couple of months.
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