Barclays backs fintech business insurance startup Nimbla

Fintech business insurance startup Nimbla has secured a £5.1 million investment in a funding round led by venture fund Fin VC and with participation from Barclays Bank.

Founded in 2016, the digital insurance platform allows businesses to check a buyer’s ability to pay and insure individual invoices against non-payment.

Nimbla works directly with businesses and brokers to provide invoice insurance cover and recently launched a new API for banks, fintech lenders and B2B platforms to enable more business to access the service.

In 2020, Nimbla partnered with Barclays Bank, enabling the bank’s one million small business customers to take out insurance against individual invoices, rather than the whole book.

Flemming Bengtsen, CEO of London-based Nimbla, said the proceeds of the funding round will be used to expand the platform and grow the team.

“We have been growing steadily over the past few years, ramping up our technology and team to better understand businesses, the nature of B2B debt and to make faster decisions to serve our growing customer base,” said Bengtsen.

“We have built a powerful and robust credit risk model, automated large parts of the process and have now launched a new API to enable others to embed seamless credit risk solutions into their platforms.”

Henry Cashin, head of EMEA at Fin VC, added: “Nimbla is giving businesses the confidence to trade again. They have a proven credit risk model and its tech is being adopted by top tier banks and a host of lending platforms.

“We believe this will scale their reach and help more businesses benefit long term.”

According to Bengtsen, during 2020 UK companies added £1.9 trillion of debt to their balance sheets, taking the total amount outstanding to over £6.6 trillion.

“This number was inflated by the various government loan schemes. Over half of them are carrying ‘toxic debts’ which carries enormous risk for their trade creditors, there is a huge opportunity and responsibility for Nimbla to give companies a peace of mind and insure their invoices against insolvencies,” he said.