Allica Bank reports first full year of profitability after revenues double
UK challenger Allica Bank has achieved its first full year of profitability as a result of its increased lending activity, according to its latest annual report.
Allica Bank reports full-year profitability
The bank, which has been lending to UK-based SMEs since 2020, reports that its revenues increased 141% in the 12 months up to 31 December, standing now at £191 million.
Filing a 75% increase in customer deposits to £2.6 billion, alongside a 47% boost in SME lending to £2 billion, the challenger now claims to be levelling £16.1 million in pre-tax profit, marking the first time it has achieved this feat since launching in 2017.
Speaking on the results, Richard Davies, Allica Bank’s CEO of four years, attributes its latest financial success to “significant growth in revenue, lending and deposits”, a growth he says shows that “our proposition for SMEs is starting to really cut through”.
Allica’s ascent into profitability could also be partly ascribed to its strategy of partnering with fintechs from across the industry to enrich its offering.
Last year alone, it tapped the likes of SurePay to implement a Confirmation of Payee (CoP) solution in March, before partnering with ClearBank in June to access client money accounts and UK payment schemes, and Wise Platform in December to enhance its cross-border payment capabilities.
Much of this activity had been facilitated by the bank’s increasingly strong financial backing, with investors such as Warwick Capital Partners, Atalaya Capital Management and TCV enabling it to land around £385 million in total investment across multiple funding rounds, including its most recent £100 million Series C of December 2022.
According to a statement, the challenger now intends to “scale further” in the hopes of penetrating over 10% of the market “in the coming years”.
