HNW Lending, the new peer-to-peer alternative lender that provides individual loans of between £60,000 and £1 million to clients against their valuable assets such as classic cars, fine wines, jewellery, yachts and art, is looking for new investors.

The business, which launched at the end of April, says it will have completed loans worth over £200,000 since then and the end of this week During the past month, the company has had requests for loans totalling £7.5 million and “many of these are likely to be funded in the coming weeks”, it claims.

HNW Lending has 10 high net worth backers as well as its founder and director Ben Shaw, who is also using his own capital to help fund loans. The minimum requirement for investors is £60,000.

Depending on the individual loan and because the proposition is based around peer-to-peer lending, interest rates for investors vary between around 6% APR and 12% APR. The higher rates are paid for more unusual assets and higher loan to values, whereas first charges on land at 40% loan to value pay around 6%. Investors choose which loans their money will be used to fund as they are bilateral loans between a lender and a borrower, with the collateral held in the lender’s name.

HNW Lending aims to arrange up to 20 loans a month, collectively valued at between £2 million and £5 million each month.

Shaw said: “There is a strong demand from many high net worth individuals to raise funds against their valuable assets, and with poor returns on cash savings and volatile stock markets, some investors find our proposition an attractive one. We aim to offer competitive returns for them for a very low risk. If the worst happens and a client cannot pay back their loan, the value of their asset that we have provided funds against should more than offset this.”