Smart Lenders AM announces the upcoming launch of a new fund dedicated to financing loans to European SMEs issued through marketplace lending platforms (crowdlending).
Smart Lenders AM is an asset management firm that specializes exclusively in financing loans issued by online marketplace lenders. Established in 2014 in the UK, the firm moved to Paris in 2018.
To date, it has financed a total of €600 million worth of consumer and SME loans issued by online lending platforms.
The new fund will be a Specialized Professional Fund (SPF) regulated under French law by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). It will be launched on 1 February 2020 with a target size of €150 million.
Smart Lenders’ investment approach will build on the company’s experience in investing in the US and European crowdlending markets for the past five years. Through their use of technology, online marketplace lending platforms can extend a multitude of smaller loans to a larger number of small businesses. It is an economical distribution channel that benefits all stakeholders. To investors, it offers higher yields and better diversification.
Having successfully launched a €200 million investment fund regulated in Luxembourg three years ago, Smart Lenders AM now offers a new investment vehicle to institutional investors who wish to lead in financing the real economy and helping create jobs in Europe.
“The European crowdlending market, whose growth we have been following for several years, now offers to institutional investors increased volumes of loans of increased quality. With this new fund, we are meeting a demand from our institutional clients for a reliable and efficient solution to funding the real economy,” declared Erich Bonnet, founder and CEO of Smart Lenders AM.
Therese Torris, PhD, is a Senior Contributing Editor to Crowdfund Insider. She is an entrepreneur and consultant in eFinance and eCommerce based in Paris. She has covered crowdfunding and P2P lending since the early days when Zopa was created in the United Kingdom. She was a director of research and consulting at Gartner Group Europe, Senior VP at Forrester Research and Content VP at Twenga. She publishes a French personal finance blog, Le Blog Finance Pratique.
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