UK lender Abound secures £800m in mix of equity and debt financing
Abound, a UK-based credit technology firm, has secured a new financing round made up of a mix of equity and debt financing that could extend up to £800 million.
Abound and Render’s co-founders Dr Michelle He and Gerald Chappell (Image source: Abound)
The financing includes a multi-year asset-backed debt financing arrangement from existing backer Citi, while Silicon Valley-based GSR Ventures led the Series B equity component.
The recently concluded round supplements the firm’s £500 million equity and debt financing raise secured last year.
Founded in 2020 by Gerald Chappell and Dr Michelle He, Abound claims to offer borrowers “more affordable loans” compared to traditional lenders, and says it has issued over £300 million in loans to date.
Abound plans to utilise the new funds to venture into prime lending within the UK market and double the size of its workforce from 65 to 130 people this year.
In addition, the lender will leverage the cash injection to roll out its proprietary AI-powered credit technology platform, Render, worldwide.
Render analyses customers’ open banking data to quickly determine their borrowing capacity, which Abound states allows enterprises to make “smarter credit risk decisions” and extend their services to more customers, including those who are “credit invisible”.
Gerald Chappell, who serves as the firm’s CEO, says that the recent financing “speaks to the confidence investors have in our business to keep growing”.
