HNW Lending, an alternative lender that provides individual loans of between £50,000 and £2 million to clients against their valuable assets, lent £14.4m in 2016, 334% higher than in 2015.

Since its launch in April 2014, it has lent well over £30m.

The amount of money it lent during the first quarter of this year at £5.8m was 242% higher than the first quarter of last year.

The average size of loan is £160,000, and the biggest loan to date was £2.1m. To date, it has provided over 175 loans with no loss of capital or interest.

HNW Lending is looking to increase the amount it can lend because it has received HMRC and FCA approval to offer Innovative Finance ISAs (IFISA), with minimum investments of £5,000. It will offer returns of between 7% per annum and 15% per annum. To date, HNW Lending has used funds provided by founder Ben Shaw and other high net worth backers.

Shaw said: “A number of high net worth individuals have been struggling to raise funds from banks, but many of their valuable assets such as classic cars and property have been rising in value, which has made it easier for them to use this as collateral to secure loans.

“Now that we have approval to offer an IFISA, we are confident that we can raise more funds and increase our loan book.”