“Door is open” for P2P firms to seek state-backed funding
“The door is very much open” to fintech lenders seeking funding commitments from British Business Investments (BBI), Peer2Peer Finance News has been told.
Judith Hartley, chief executive of the BBI, said that the commercial arm of the state development bank is open to investing through more peer-to-peer lending platforms and other alternative lenders who can deliver funding to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK.
“From a BBI perspective all I can say is the door is open,” said Hartley. “The door is very much open for any applicant who should want to approach us and who believes they can meet our minimum criteria and from that perspective we would welcome applications.”
Hartley added that the BBI will look at all proposals from fintech lenders.
The BBI has already channelled funds through a number of P2P lending platforms, including Assetz Capital and Funding Circle.
And earlier this week, P2P platform Folk2Folk announced that it had secured a £7m funding line from the BBI.
“We have a separate investment criteria and as long as it meets those criteria, and given that our focus is on smaller UK companies most P2P platforms would hit that criteria,” said Adam Kelly, managing director of BBI.
“In terms of where we look, we were an early investor in the likes of Funding Circle. We’re now looking at the smaller sized P2Ps that are coming through. In terms of the ticket that we can write, that probably has the most impact. We would look to make more investments around P2P.”
Hartley said that the BBI looks for fintech lenders “where we can see that lots of money is going to be going out to SMEs”.
“We want to see in terms of investing into that loan debt that there’s a stable business there that we can back in the long term and partner with for the long term, and we’re also looking for market rate returns as well,” she added.
However, P2P platforms will face some competition for BBI funds.
“Investing into fintech is still a big part of the portfolio – its important,” said Hartley. “But there are other sectors that are also important like life sciences and deep tech. There are other high growth and fast growth companies and areas which investors are interested in, but of course the UK has got a definite strength in fintech – it’s a key strength so of course investment will still go into it, but there are other sectors as well which are generating interest.”
The BBI was set up in 2014 with the aim of bringing extra diversity to the SME finance market. It is a commercial subsidiary within the BBB group, which has its own board, its own accounts and its own website. Its mission is to increase the supply and diversity of finance for small businesses across the UK whilst producing positive returns for the taxpayer.
“There are four different objectives of what we’re trying to do,” said Hartley.
“One is to push more supply of alternative finance out into the market. Secondly, it’s about generating that commercial return for UK taxpayers, so everything we do we match with other private investors. Thirdly it’s about supporting the development of alternative providers of different types of products in the market. And finally it’s about regions and trying to help address those regional imbalances in terms of access to finance.”
The BBI’s latest annual results revealed that it made a record 18 commitments in the 12 months to March 2021, delivering £473m to funding partners and fintech lenders.
“£473m is the second highest amount we’ve ever done and we’re particularly pleased with it because the first few months of the financial year was when the whole county was in lockdown and so the market was dislocated,” said Hartley. “For the first few months we weren’t doing new investments, so the fact that we have done what we have in a more concentrated period is a sign of how much we wanted to make sure we kept the money going out into the market.”