This week, chief legal officer of crowdfunding platform Seedrs, Karren Kerrigan, and chairman for tax and economic affairs of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Tony Baron, sat down with Workspace to discuss their 2016 predictions for alternative finance.
During the interview, Kerrigan stated alternative finance will increasingly catch the eye of institutional investors – large, sophisticated investors like pension funds, investment funds and banks with considerable amounts of money to invest. She noted:
“Alternative finance and crowdfunding are getting a lot of attention from institutional investors, both [in terms of] investing on platforms but also [the] potential for equity crowdfunding to work alongside institutional investment. Equity crowdfunding fits alongside IPOs (initial public offerings) and we are looking to be pretty involved in that.”
Baron then revealed that he anticipates more growth of alternative financing options as these continue to be “fairly aggressively marketed.” He added:
“That awareness will increase as time goes by and I would expect you will see more use of peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding as time goes by. How quickly it picks up is another matter.”
