Assetz Capital has surpassed the £1bn mark for lending to SMEs and housebuilders across the UK, seven years from being set up in 2013.

To celebrate the milestone, the marketplace lender has launched a new 1% cashback offer for existing and new investors who invest new funds via the platform before midnight on 5 April 2020.

Investors who keep these funds invested until midnight on 6 March 2021 will then receive 1% cashback on the eligible funds, which will be paid directly into the investor’s cash account on 10 March 2021.

Assetz Capital funds its property secured loans through a growing network of more than 38,000 retail and institutional investors, who have earned more than £109m of total gross interest on their investments to date. In addition, around half of the £1bn of lending to date has already been repaid on time by borrowers.

Having reached its last milestone of £500m of lending in June 2018, Assetz has doubled its lending again in the last 20 months.

As part of its business lending, Assetz Capital has been a supporter of the UK housing market, funding a total of 4,846 new homes since its inception. In fact, last year, the firm funded the construction of 1 in every 100 new homes built in the last year, the entirety of the growth in new housing starts.

Stuart Law (pictured), CEO and founder of Assetz Capital, said: “Peer to peer lending – having started out as a financial initiative by the government to help address the huge shortfall in business lending – has now grown to become one of the most viable forms of alternative finance in the UK. In the seven years that we’ve been operating, we’ve continued to see low interest rates and insufficient business lending from the banks, and there are no signs of this changing any time soon.

“Our peer-to-peer model will continue to support economic growth through UK businesses and housebuilders in 2020 and beyond, and our new 1% cashback offer will provide a welcome boost to our investors looking for a fairer return on their investments.

“What separates us, and other successful lenders, from those who haven’t succeeded over the years, is the deep lending and business experience of our team – we don’t do tick box lending, nor lend by computer algorithms, but instead lend through career-long, real-world experience to sound borrowers.

“Having funded around 1 in 100 new homes built last year and supported many thousands of jobs, we have firmly established ourselves as one of most successful providers of much needed income for investors as well as being a much-needed funder of growing businesses and in turn the UK economy.”