MarketFinance secures £50m from latest funding line

MarketFinance recently added business loans and revolving credit facilities to its product suite.

MarketFinance secures £50m from latest funding line

Fintech business lender MarketFinance has secured an additional £50m from one of Israel's largest asset managers, Viola Credit, to lend to UK SMEs under the HM Treasury and British Business Bank's Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBLIS).

 

This additional funding comes following the launch of MarketFinance's 'unified application' process, which enables SMEs to presented with a variety of finance options and select those best suited to their needs through one application.

The CBILS initiative concludes at the end of September, with pre-submitted applications in September being valid until the end of November.

Institutional investors have provided 70% of capital that MarketFinance lends out to businesses since 2011.

Anil Stocker, chief executive officer at MarketFinance, said: “Only 60,409 CBILS facilities have been approved since the pandemic started, versus 1.2 million bounce back loan approvals.

"This shows there are many businesses who could still benefit from accessing CBILS finance before the scheme ends.

"For many who took a Bounce Back Loan, there is now a short window where they can refinance onto a larger CBILS facility which could see them over to the new year.

"Vast swathes of the UK SME community haven’t applied or remain unaware of the CBILS initiative and that it concludes in a few weeks.

"By lining up this additional funding, we want to send a strong signal to the market that MarketFinance is here to help.”

MarketFinance allows almost half of applications to be decided instantly due to its automated decision engine 'Autoflow'.

Its proprietary risk model 'Selector' is also able to assess each applicant under pre-COVID conditions.

In 2020, MarketFinance added business loans and revolving credit facilities to a product suite including selective invoice finance, contract finance and confidential whole-ledger invoice finance.

Stocker added: “Since launching CBILS loans, we’re already lending out around £10m per month and our product development in invoice finance means we’re getting funds out 40% faster than six months ago.

"We’re constantly working on how we can reduce the time to funding for our new applicants and existing users.

"CBILS has only accelerated the pace at which we’re investing in our various products.

"The MarketFinance vision is to make finance available, easy-to-use and fairly priced to viable small businesses that need it most.”

MarketFinance is accredited to lend under the CBILS, providing term loans from £50,001 to £150,000 and revolving credit facilities from £50,001 to £5m to UK SMEs.

Stocker said: “We make finance easier for business owners.

"Over the years we’ve refined our platform, allowing integrations with banks, online accountancy packages and credit bureaus to make lending a seamless process.

"This has saved time for owners and allowed them to focus more energy on the running of their business.”