Wednesday January 1st 2020

Alternative investments platform strengthens Advisory Board as growth accelerates

London, 7 November 2016

CoInvestor, the alternative investment platform for sophisticated private investors, has raised £1.1million in additional capital in under two weeks as it seeks to accelerate growth following a successful six months since full launch.

The funding builds on pre-existing capital raised from a number of individual and corporate investors, with 60% of the new funds coming from existing shareholders and 40% from new investors.

The business has also strengthened its Advisory Board with the addition of Ian Peacock, Head of UK and Ireland at IG Group, where he joins Jonathan Polin, Group CEO of Sanlam (UK). Peacock will help to provide high level strategic advice as the business enters a new growth phase.

The new funding and appointment of Peacock follow swiftly on the back of a major software upgrade to the CoInvestor platform, which will provide enhanced access to alternative asset investments for wealth managers and their clients.

The additional capital raised will be used to spearhead further growth including expansion of the team and development of new product offerings, driven by demand from CoInvestor’s existing fund manager partners. This will include the launch of CoAdvisor – an innovative white-label digital solution for wealth managers seeking to close the advice gap in alternative assets investments – the first of its kind within the industry.

Charles Owen, founder of CoInvestor commented:

“We’re delighted to see the support we have from existing and new investors in our first year of operations, and to have secured additional capital to fuel our future growth and development of new product offerings.

The addition of Ian Peacock to our Advisory Board will greatly help to shape the direction for CoInvestor as we look to build on our current momentum and continue to scale the business over the coming months.

I’m excited to have the opportunity to advise a rapidly growing business that is instigating real change within the traditional investment landscape,” says Ian Peacock. “CoInvestor is uniquely positioned to help fund managers and advisors connect with savvy investors who are increasingly seeking diversification of their portfolios through alternative assets”.

Launched in December 2015, CoInvestor’s unique online platform enables sophisticated private investors to build their own portfolio of alternative asset investments by co-investing alongside experienced fund managers on a deal-by-deal basis.

Richard Roberts from Oxford Capital adds:

“The CoInvestor platform has already proven to be a useful digital distribution channel for us, and the latest software upgrade further enhances the offering. We look forward to working closely with CoInvestor to continue building upon the promising momentum we have seen in past months”.

The platform is endorsed by top fund managers including Oxford Capital, MMC Ventures and Chelverton Asset Management and has the backing of a number of major industry figures including Matthew Peacock, Founding Partner at Hanover Investments, who acts as Non-Executive Chairman.

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About CoInvestor

CoInvestor allows private investors to co-invest alongside experienced fund managers on a deal by deal basis from as little as £5,000.

The idea was conceived to capitalise on a new investor mind-set, which sees individuals increasingly using technology and seeking out alternative asset investments, but lacking either the time or experience to properly mitigate their investment risk.

At the same time, CoInvestor benefits fund managers, who have rigid distribution models and are increasingly losing market share due to the growth of direct online investing, by giving them a secondary distribution channel to access these direct investors. This has been a key motivation for award-winning fund managers such as Oxford Capital and MMC Ventures to join the platform.

It also allows financial advisers to better advise their clients on how to mitigate risk and boost returns on alternative investments, helping them to retain their clients in a changing investment landscape.

CoInvestor has so far focused on launching an initial EIS product but is looking to rapidly expand its remit to further products (e.g. SITR, BPR, IHT) that reflect private investor trends, as well as asset classes, such as VC, private equity, institutional property and high yield debt, that have traditionally been limited to institutional investors.

Matthew Peacock, Non Executive Chairman, Main Board

Matthew Peacock is the founding partner of Hanover Investors. In his early career he ran International M&A; in London for Barclays BZW, following work in NY and London for CSFB. Over the 1990s he led a series of successful private turnarounds as a lead shareholder and CEO. In 2002 he founded Hanover Investors. Since then he has led the turnarounds and boards of numerous PLCs including 4imprint, Fairpoint, Elementis & Regenersis. He has deep industry experience across the outsourced services, industrial and financial sectors. He holds an LLM in Law from Cambridge University and was one of the founding Trustees of Charity Technology Trust.

Jonathan Polin, Strategic Adviser

Jonathan joined Sanlam in 2015. As group chief executive officer he is responsible to the Board for the development and delivery of UK group strategy.

Before joining Sanlam, Jonathan was group chief executive at Ashcourt Rowan Plc where he transformed the business from a loss making entity with a market cap of £22 million to a business worth £129 million. Prior to this he was sales and marketing director at Ignis Asset Management. During Jonathan’s time at Ignis he was responsible for building its third party business in institutional, wholesale and retail markets in the UK, Europe, Asia and the US. He was also the architect of the highly successful joint venture strategy. Jonathan was on the Board of Ignis and each of the joint venture businesses and offshore companies.

He began his financial services career with Prudential in 1992, having spent the previous 12 years in the Army. In 1994 Jonathan took up the position of managing director UK, European and Middle Eastern sales at Aberdeen Asset Management.