P2P lenders raise more than £4.3m from future fund

Peer-to-peer lending platforms have raised at least £4,346,470 from the government’s future fund, Peer2Peer Finance News can reveal.

The future fund was launched last May to support innovative and growing companies amid the pandemic. It closed to new applications on 31 January 2021, with all successful bids set to be funded by 31 March 2021.

The government has earmarked more than £1bn to be delivered to 1,055 companies under the scheme, including six P2P lenders: CapitalRise, Crowd2Fund, Assetz Capital, JustUs, FutureBricks and Propio.

Prime property lender CapitalRise was one of the first platforms to take advantage of the fund, launching a Seedrs campaign in May 2020, which raised £1.15m from private investors. This was matched with another £1.15m from the government fund.

According to the Crowd2Fund website, its Reboot Britain campaign has raised £1.47m from private investors, which will be matched by the future fund.

Meanwhile, Assetz Capital has raised more than £750,000 via the future fund, after an oversubscribed Seedrs crowdfunding round.

And JustUs founder Lee Birkett said that his platform expects to receive £600,000 from the future fund by the beginning of March, to match a £600,000 investor fundraising round.

Property lenders FutureBricks and Propio have raised £237,470 and £139,000 from the future fund, respectively, following their own private funding rounds.

The future fund offers convertible loans ranging from £125,000 to £5m from the government, subject to at least equal match funding from private investors.

Firms must have previously raised at least £250,000 in equity investment from third-party investors in the past five years.