Iwoca lands £270m debt funding package from Citibank and Barclays
UK-based SME lender Iwoca has landed a debt funding package totalling £270 million to increase its presence in both domestic and international markets amid the “mounting demand for finance from small businesses”.
Iwoca secures £270m debt funding package
The package is comprised of a joint £150 million commitment from Citibank and Insight Investment, which the lender intends to leverage to boost its growth in Germany, alongside a further £120 million arrangement with Barclays and US-based Värde Partners, which it will put towards scaling its operations in the UK.
This latter pair of investors previously provided Iwoca with a £200 million debt facility last October.
Launched in 2012, Iwoca operates an embedded lending solution that enables small businesses to access loans through third-party platforms and neobanks.
It claims it has provided £3 billion in loans to SMEs since its launch, including £200 million lent across 9,000 business loans in the last quarter alone.
The firm says that its most recent quarterly SME Expert Index indicated that 76% of brokers are actively reporting a decrease in SME funding from banks, while a larger 86% predict that the demand for funding will increase.
“This investment will enable us to keep up with the high demand from small businesses,” states Christoph Rieche, CEO and co-founder of Iwoca, citing the flexibility and speed of its Flexi-Loan service as a key advantage.
Rieche claims the lender has processed in excess of 130,000 small business loans to date, leveraging its “ample data” through risk modelling to lend to businesses “that are outside the restrictions imposed by the high-street banks, especially when they don’t have multiple years of trading”.
