Assetz Capital Review
Real Estate Crowdfunding with automated accounts
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Total Funded:
£1,006,710,626
Average Return:
5.4%*
Assetz Capital
Assetz Capital was the first peer-to-peer lending platform in the United Kingdom to facilitate secured collateral-backed loans. This platform specializes in loans to small UK businesses and property developers and has several different investment accounts such as IFISA, Manual Lending, Quick Access and more. All loans are in GBP and collateral backed by assets in the security of property or UK business. Available to EU citizens with a UK Bank Account.
| Company: | Assetz Capital Limited |
| Business: | Business Lending & Real Estate Lending |
| Founded: | 2012 |
| Founders: | Stuart Law, David Penston & Chris Mellish |
| Origin: | United Kingdom |
| Ownership: | Private (But Seedrs Campaign) |
| Countries: | United Kingdom |
| Requirement: | UK Bank Account |
Office location in Manchester
Table of Contents
Investor Introduction Video - How does Assetz Capital work?
Assetz Capital Pros & Cons
Pros
- Medium interest rates
- Only collateral backed secured loans
- Long and good track record
- Regulated with full permission (FCA: 724996)
- Raised money through equity crowdfunding lately
- Secondary market and early exit available
- IFISA and predefined portfolio accounts available
Cons
- Medium risk
- Must invest manual to achieve the highest returns
- May need to discount manual loans if low demand
- Fair priced interest rates due to high demand
- Only available to EU citizens with a UK bank account
Characteristics of Loans
Interest Rates
4.5% – 12%
Loan Durations
1 – 60 months
Currency
British Pounds
Asset as Collateral ⇙
Minimum Investment ⇙
Direct Investment Structure
Loans on Assetz Capital
Secured Business Loan
Secured Property Loan
Buyback Guarantee on Assetz Capital
As with most direct peer-to-peer platforms not operating with Loan Originators, loans on Assetz Capital do not come with a buyback guarantee. Thus, defaults with a recovery process are expected to happen when manually lending, yet there is a provision fund connected to specific Portfolio Accounts ensuring steady cash flow. This mechanism will be elaborated later in this review.
As Buyback Guarantee on specific loans do not lower or remove risks, but simply transfers it somewhere else – the upside is more easily understandable risks associated with specific loans. By not broadening the risk to a default in the issuer of a guarantee (originator), having no buyback guarantee on individual loans simply makes the investments more understandable. This entails, of course, the risk of individual loan defaults instead of one huge devastating default in the issuer.
The downside of not buying a sort of insurance from the issuer of the loans is that the lenders have to consider diversification in a more sophisticated way when investing manually. On the opposite, there are portfolio accounts that deals with this matter for you at this platform and with the provision funds that stores a certain amount of cash to secure lenders, its maybe an even more transparent structure than the regular buyback guarantee. Most platforms recommend having 100+ loans to be well-diversified. To get a better idea of the risks associated with buyback guarantees you can read our article about this type of financial product here.
Direct Investment Structure
There are two different types of investment structures in P2P investing:
- The direct structure means you are buying a claim against the borrower directly.
- The indirect structure means you obtain exposure to a loan by investing in a loan issued by a platform company to the loan originator.
Assetz Capital was the first platform in the UK to only offer secured loans with collateral as the direct investment structure seen in traditional lending-based crowdfunding. The transparency and simplicity of having just a borrower, a lender and the platform facilitating the transaction is a huge plus in regards to being able to grasp the risks involved outside of the loan itself (which can be hard enough to understand).
Platform Features
Manual Lending
At Assetz Capital you have a cash balance account and a manual lending account. To be able to invest manually, you have to move money from your cash account to the manual lending account. After that your ready to lend directly into specific loans by clicking the “Browse loans” just next to your balance, taking you to the overview of live loans at the marketplace as seen in the image below.
This platform have a very large selection of live loans at all times, making diversification into different loans very available and combined with the many filtering options the interface becomes one of the best based direct lending platforms in the market. Especially the feature with LTV/SECURITY being so transparent and simple gives a fast and easy understanding of risks involved with specific potential loans to invest in.
When putting your mouse over the security icons valuable information appears:
- The House: Displays the approx value of the security in either commercial or residential property and at what priority rank the security has.
- The Hammer: Displays if there is any legal assignments such as Collateral Warranties or Duty of Care Deed giving extra security to the lender. For example Care Deed secures that lenders administrates a rental property in case of default instead of a third party.
- The Book: Displays if the loan is secured against first debenture, meaning that the lenders are the first to have rights over the company assets in case of default or if there is first debenture in another company assets.
- The Person: Displays if there is any personal guarantee by for example the director and how much of the loan amount is secured by this persons private liability.
- The Briefcase: Displays if there is a guarantee on a corporate level such as the holding company or any owner company that is involved in the corporation.
- The Truck: Displays if there is security in business assets such as equipment or other valuables as shares/part of ownership in the company that could be liquidated in case of loan default.
Automatic Investing
Assetz Capital has a controversial yet maybe even better and more economically rational approach to automatic investing. Since manually selecting loans requires more due diligence with each specific loan there is only the option to set automatic re-investing into the same loan, compared to what is seen at other platforms in Europe where automatic lending based lenders own preferences in specific criteria is available.
The automatic investing is available at this platform for predefined portfolios by their analytics team, ensuring lenders get a sober diversification based on their data, over 8 years of experience in the market and other relevant data about such types of lending from the banking industry. There are 5 different pre-defined investment accounts, which are described in the section “Portfolio Accounts” just below.
Secondary Market
The Secondary Market at Assetz Capital is one of the most liquid in the industry with 28 percent of the loans traded on the aftermarket from the launch in 2013 till October 2017. When loans typically range from 1 to 5 years in terms of duration with monthly installments, it is a huge plus for lenders that they can exit early if necessary. This, of course, only applies as long as other lenders want to buy into the loan, which might require a discount, but always at zero percent Secondary Market fees.
When selling loans you do no longer wish to hold, you have the option of setting different criteria for the sales process: A time frame if you wish to start the selling at a certain time or let it expire after a certain time, selling it at par value or a discount from -1% to -99,5%, creating an action if monitoring event or credit event occurs. The below image displays the selling options.
Portfolio Accounts on Assetz Capital
Assetz Capital has several different investment accounts including the IFISA allowing you to earn a tax-free interest rate on the first £20,000, while the normal investment accounts are automatic investment portfolios in their secured property and business loans designed for either short or long term lending. The interest rate is capped and should be considered with the relevant account’s expected defaults and losses.
Gross quoted interest rate and access times related to withdrawals are under normal market conditions and cannot be guaranteed. Remember that this is peer-to-peer lending and not a bank account, in which the goal is determined for investing short term (instant withdrawal up to 90-day access) or long term (secured property or GB business loans).
All the Portfolio Accounts on the platform is covered by a Provision Fund as an extra layer of protection against expected defaults and to secure payments for lenders. Every Portfolio has it’s own Provision Fund connected with a certain multiple coverage of the expected default rate for each account as seen below.
Short Term Portfolio Accounts
- Quick Access: Designed to provide the highest possible speed of access so lenders can withdraw instantly without a charge for withdrawal. The rates as of 31 March 2019 are the following:
Targeted Interest Rate: 4.10%
Expected Loss Rate: 0.48%
Provision Fund Coverage: 6.57x (3.15%) - 30-Day Access: Designed to provide access with just 30 days of notice without a charge for withdrawal. The rates as of 31 March 2019 are the following:
Targeted Interest Rate: 5.10%
Expected Loss Rate: 0.48%
Provision Fund Coverage: 5.32x (2.55%) - 90-Day Access: Designed to provide access with 90 days of notice without a charge for withdrawal. The rates as of 31 March 2019 are the following:
Targeted Interest Rate: 5.75%
Expected Loss Rate: 0.48%
Provision Fund Coverage: 1.72x (0.83%)
Long Term Portfolio Accounts
- Property Secured
Designed to create exposure to UK property & development loans without any predetermined withdrawal access terms. To withdraw before loan term your subject to demand from other investors on the Secondary Market. The rates as of 31 March 2019 are the following:Targeted Interest Rate: 5.50%
Expected Loss Rate: 0.27%
Provision Fund Coverage: 6.80x (2.2%)
Collateral: 1st or 2nd charge on land or property, machinery, invoices, company assets, debtor books or other realizable assets often together with personal guarantees from business owners.
Maximum LTV: Depending on security being only property or entire business 1st or 2nd charge.
– Commercial Property (57-70%), Industrial Property (50-70%) & Residential Property (57-72%)
Minimum investment: £1 but the platform recommends minimum £500 to fully benefit the portfolio diversification mechanism - Great British Business
Designed to create exposure to UK business loans without any predetermined withdrawal access terms. To withdraw before loan term your subject to demand from other investors on the Secondary Market. The rates as of 31 March 2019 are the following:Targeted Interest Rate: 6.25%
Expected Loss Rate: 0.24%
Provision Fund Coverage: 4.42x (1.1%)
Collateral: 1st or 2nd charge on land or property, machinery, invoices, company assets, debtor books or other realizable assets often together with personal guarantees from business owners.
Maximum LTV: 75% of each loan’s property value
Minimum investment: £1 but the platform recommends minimum £500 to fully benefit the portfolio diversification mechanism
Nice to Know for Investors
Registration Process
Deposit & Withdrawal Process
Depositing funds to your investor account is done in three steps:
- Transfer money to your Assetz Capital account from your UK bank account with a traditional bank transfer.
- Your funds will be available for investment within the day of confirmed arrival (usually 1-3 banking days).
- After the funds are received and added to the account, you will receive an e-mail confirmation.
Withdrawing funds is very simple if you are already KYC validated. You just click the “withdraw funds”, enter the desired amount and wait the 1 to 3 business days before the requested amount will be in your account. There is no minimum withdrawal restrictions and no further additional fees or commission for withdrawing the funds – except maybe from your own bank. Remember, depending on their fee structure, your own bank might charge fees for handling the transaction or exchanging currency.
Can I use online banking services such as Transferwise or Revolut?
Reporting
Assetz Capital Tax
Unless you open an Assetz Capital IFISA, the return you receive with us on your investment is paid gross. You are responsible for the payment of any tax due.Assetz Capital FAQ: “What’s my tax liability?”
Support
Assetz Capital Competitors
Is Assetz Capital available for non UK Residents?
Yes, overseas residents can invest on our platform as long as they hold a UK Sterling bank account and we are able to verify their address and identity overseas.Assetz Capital FAQ: “Can non UK residents invest with Assetz Capital?”
Is Assetz Capital Regulated?
Assetz Capital Bonus - Receive £50 on your first investment
Assetz Capital Statistics
| Founded: | 2012 |
| Total investments: | £1,006.7 million |
| Total investor earnings: | £107 million |
| Amount of investors: | +38 thousands |
| Current actual loss rate 2013: | 5.5% |
| Current actual loss rate 2014: | 6.7% |
| Current actual loss rate 2015: | 0.0% |
| Current actual loss rate 2016: | 4.3% |
| Current actual loss rate 2017: | 0.6% |
| Current actual loss rate 2018: | 0.4% |
| Current actual loss rate 2019: | 0.1% |
| Current actual loss rate 2020: | 0.0% |
Disclosure
Please note that this overview may contain affiliate links. It means that a commission is earned if you decide to invest after using the link – of course without additional costs to you. The information on this site does not constitute investment advice and is solely to give you a simple and easy overview of the platform. Always conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.