LendInvest receives long-term warehouse facility from Citi as its institutional lending capital passes £500m ($664 million)

• Citi’s warehouse funding line supports LendInvest’s entry into £40 billion buy-to-let market

• LendInvest has built the largest institutional capital base in UK FinTech

London, 2 November 2017 – LendInvest, the UK’s leading marketplace platform for property finance, has agreed a long-term financing facility with Citi, the global bank, paving its way to enter the UK’s £40 billion buy-to-let (BTL) market.

LendInvest now manages over £500 million ($664 million) of lending capital on behalf of its institutional investors, creating the largest institutional capital base of any UK FinTech lender on record.

Citi joins a broad range of institutional investors investing in LendInvest’s secured property loans, including Macquarie Bank, Merseyside Pension Fund and a listed UK challenger bank. In addition to multiple institutional funding lines, LendInvest allows individuals and other corporate investors to access its investment opportunities via its Online Investment Platform for high net worth and sophisticated investors, a discretionary fund, and a £500m bond programme listed on the London Stock Exchange. To date, investors have funded over £1.1 billion of loans to help borrowers buy, build or renovate 4,000 UK homes.

Chris Philp, PPS to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, commented: “This partnership between LendInvest and Citi is a great example of major institutions getting behind UK FinTech in a serious way, and confirms London’s status as a leading destination for global FinTech investment. LendInvest’s push into buy-to-let is a great example of FinTech moving into more hard-to-disrupt markets that could be otherwise left behind by financial innovation.”

Under the terms of the financing, Citi will provide a warehouse funding line to LendInvest that will be used to finance specialist BTL loans, designed for professional, experienced landlords and investors. Initially, the BTL product will be piloted with a select group of mortgage brokers, with the loans being rolled out to the wider market over the coming months.

LendInvest’s BTL loans will be available on terms up to 30 years, taking the business into the longer duration specialist lending market after earning a dominant share (c. 10%) of the UK’s short-term bridging finance market. Entry into the BTL market is a natural next step for LendInvest, that will accelerate the company’s volume of lending, and create more investment opportunities for LendInvest’s diverse community of investors.

Christian Faes, Co-founder & CEO at LendInvest, said: “Institutional capital coming onto our platform from some of the world’s largest institutions is the ultimate validation of the quality of the lending we do. This new funding line from Citi shows how our business has evolved from disruptive FinTech startup to established scale-up business as we move towards the mainstream mortgage market.

“Citi’s backing equips us with the firepower to expand into longer-term lending, as we take our superior technology and processes into the professional portfolio landlord market. It also gives us an opportunity to work closely with a team that is world-class in the global mortgage market and a well-established player in the securitisation space.”

LendInvest’s BTL product will be supported by an entirely online mortgage application and case management portal. The end-to-end, paperless, technology-driven system is specially designed to alleviate pain points in the mortgage process for brokers and borrowers, providing a superior experience and turnaround time from application through to completion, and to support LendInvest’s underwriting team.

LendInvest was advised by the Financial Services Corporate Finance team at EY. Nick Parkhouse, Associate Partner at EY, added: “We are delighted to have advised LendInvest on this landmark transaction. The buy-to-let market is moving in favour of specialist lenders and warehouse financing enables a business to scale up originations and grow market share. We believe this is a significant step in the evolution of LendInvest as an innovative and diversified property lending business.”