SEP gives motor finance group an £8m injection

SCOTTiSh Equity partners has added another company to its expanding portfolio of digital media and e-commerce firms with an £8 million investment in an online consumer lender.

The deal follows a rapid year of expansion at Car Loan 4U, a car finance specialist founded in Macclesfield in 2006. The company employs 150 people, and is aiming to quadruple its current turnover of £11m within four years.

SEp partner Andrew Davison, who will join the board of Car Loan 4U, said the firm’s growth to date as a self-funded business was impressive. it now claims to be the UK’s top provider of online used car finance.

“We believe there is a very large market opportunity, with seven million used cars being sold in the UK last year,” he said. “This involved £8 billion of dealer-arranged finance across an estimated 845,000 deals.”

James Wilkinson, co-founder and chief executive of Car Loan 4U, said the business had expansion plans “across the board”.

he added: “This investment will allow us to accelerate innovations in our technology and deliver a vastly improved customer experience, as well as expanding our brand and helping us set a new industry standard for the way consumers shop online for car finance.”

SEp’s other investments in the digital and online arena include Skyscanner, the Edinburgh-based travel search engine, which this week announced a near-doubling in turnover to £65.8m. SEp contributed £2.5m to Skyscanner’s first round of venture capital funding in 2007.

Other companies in the portfolio include Smarter Grid Solutions, energy services company Anesco and Aridhia, a healthcare informatics specialist. in total, SEp has investments in 40 companies throughout the UK operating in the technology, healthcare and energy sectors.