Edinburgh fintech raises millions to fund Scottish SMES
● Peer-to-peer lender to make almost £19m available to small firms across UK
Small businesses across Scotland are to benefit from an almost £19 million funding pot raised by Edinburgh-based fintech Lendingcrowd.
The peer-to-peer lender has struck a deal bringing together finance from the Governmentbacked Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) – the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise– and Dutch entrepreneurial bank NIBC to form a “unique” funding deal.
SI Band NIB Care to lend a combined £18.8 ma cross Lending Crowd’ s platform, which will be made avail able as business loans of up to £500,000 to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMES) across Scotland and there st of Britain.
The fintech hailed the “transformational” move as funding requests from UK firms hit a record high this year.
It marks the second lending deal that the platform has agreed with SIB, following on from a £2.8m commitment made by the bank in October 2016.
Lendingcrowd will distribute the finance via its online platform, which can provide SMES with a decision in the same day and access to the funds within ten days.
It has facilitated more than 660 loans, exceeding a combined total of£57m, to UK SMES since it was established in 2014. Of this total, more than 140 loans with a value of in excess of £14.1m have been provided to businesses in Scotland.
These include Pick erin g’ s G in producer Sum me rhall Distiller y, Dundee -based mobile game developer Tag Games, and capital rental agency Umega Lettings.
This new investment comes after Lendingcrowd, which is chaired by former Standard Life chief executive Sir Sandy Crombie,w as selected earlier this year by governmentbacked Tech Nation for its Upscale 4.0 programme for high-growth UK tech companies.
Stuart Lunn,fo under and chief executive of Lendingcrowd, said: “We’ve had a record number of requests for funding from British businesses so far this year, showing that the appetite for alternative sources of finance to fund their ambitions only seems to be getting stronger.
“There are many small businesses crying out for finance and the funding from SIB and NIBC, coupled with our strong retail investor base, will allow Lendingcrowd to help even more companies fulfil their ambitions.”
SI B director Kerry Sharp said: “We are delighted to provide the loan funding to Lendingcrowd, Scotland’s marketplace lender, in order to support the substantial funding from NIBC, thereby continuing our efforts to stimulate the Scottish market for alternative and innovative forms of finance.
“Having worked with Lendingcrowd since 2016, we are delighted they have successfully grown their alternative funding operations to attract significant international funding, increasing and broadening the supply of capital to our SMES.”