Since Australia fixed a glaring shortcoming in the country’s “crowd-sourced funding” regulations, equity crowdfunding has gained a new spring in its step.
Under current Aussie rules, an issuer may raise up to $5 million in an online securities offering. Retail investors are capped at $10,000 per year, per company with sophisticated investors unencumbered by a limit.
Recently, Crowdfund Insider reported on a strong quarter from Birchal. The crowdfunding platform reported it had raised approximately $4.8 million from around 3,300 investors and hosted five successful “CSF” offers, including Australia’s largest crowdfunding offer to date.
Now Equitise, an investment platform that operates both in New Zealand and Australia, has claimed the top spot as Australia’s largest equity crowdfunding platform.
Equitise has reported that since January 2018, Equitise has raised $8.2 million for seven successful securities offerings ($1.2 million average raise). Approximately 5,500 investors have backed issuers on their site with a 70% success rate for offerings.
Equitise also lists wholesale securities offerings and participated in two IPOs during 2018.
So is bigger always better? Not necessarily. But then equity crowdfunding is just beginning in Australia as the rule change kicked in last September. Let’s see how things look at the end of 2019.
ASIC recently issued a report assessing online capital formation in Australia. As for CSF, the regulator stated:
“We will continue to monitor the CSF regime and will provide advice to the Government as appropriate about any necessary refinements. At this stage, it is too early to form a view as to whether the CSF regime is a sustainable means of providing capital funding to businesses.”