KKR's first asset-based finance fund raises $2.1 billion

(Reuters) - Global Investment firm KKR & Co Inc on Wednesday closed its first asset-backed finance fund with about $2.1 billion from investors who are increasingly turning to collateral-based cash flows with attractive yields to beat market volatility.

KKR's Asset-Based Finance Partners fund drew from a diverse group of new and existing investors, including public and corporate pensions, sovereign wealth funds and commercial banks, and about $150 million from KKR.

The fund aims to provide capital to global private credit instruments backed by financial and hard assets.

"Demand (for private credit funds) has been driven by global bank deleveraging, the need for fast and sophisticated credit solutions and the inability of traditional capital to provide them," managing directors who oversee the asset-backed finance (ABF) investment strategy at KKR said.

KKR has so far deployed more than $6 billion across 54 ABF investments globally since 2016 through a combination of portfolio acquisitions, platform investments and structured investments, according to a statement.

The company established its credit platform in 2004, and made its first private credit investment the year after.

As of March 31, it was managing nearly $184 billion of credit assets globally, including about $71 billion in private credit.

(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)