iwoca, one of Europe’s largest small business lenders, has secured funding via the government Future Fund scheme.
The Future Fund is designed to support innovative, high growth firms that typically rely on equity investment, offering to match third party investments of up to £5m by subscribing for convertible loans issued by such firms.
Since launching in 2012, iwoca has lent over £1 billion and made funding available to 50,000 small businesses. The announcement comes after iwoca has entered into a debt funding platform which allows it to access up to £100m of funds to support new customers through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Lending Scheme (CBILS).2 The company will use both investments to continue its support for the UK SME community and scale-up the provision of finance to small businesses to help get the economy back on track.
Michael Elalouf, CFO, iwoca said: “This investment enables us to focus on helping more small businesses rebuild and adjust to the new normal.
“Access to finance is now even more important to ensure both small businesses and the economy recover quickly. We will scale across our product offering to drive this recovery: our CBILS offering will support small companies affected by the crisis and our Flexi-Loan will help growing businesses manage their cash flow. Additionally, iwocaPay will give small businesses more control over payment terms - an important reassurance at a time when many are experiencing a great degree of uncertainty.3 We don’t just want businesses to survive this pandemic but grow and build sustainable businesses for many years to come.”
iwoca was accredited for CBILS on 20th May 2020,4 and has been lending since June. The Future Fund investment will help iwoca scale this even further so that more businesses can benefit from attractive government initiatives.
David Dick is the Director of B&H Commercials and received a CBILS loan from iwoca: “This is massive for us. It’s effectively a lifeline to help us get through the coronavirus crisis - we’re delighted. If I contrast the quality of service I’ve had with iwoca to the experience that I’ve had with my high street bank, it’s chalk and cheese.
“I submitted exactly the same application as I had with my bank, and boom, here we are. Less than two weeks later and it’s been funded. Not only is iwoca quick and flexible, but they’re also very good at understanding the nature of a business. The ability to provide that quality of customer service is huge and will help us get through this difficult time.”