iwoca receives £270m debt financing package from Citi, Barclays

Business fintech lender iwoca has secured a new £270 million package of debt funding from Citi and Barclays, taking total investment in the company to more than £1 billion since its inception in 2012.

Citibank and Insight Investment have made £150 million in debt financing commitments to support iwoca’s growth in Germany, while Barclays and Värde have supplied a further £120 million for the UK business.

In October last year, iwoca raised £200 million in funding from Barclays and Värde, having secured £170 million from Pollen Street Capital in January 2023.

Between January and March this year, iwoca lent in excess of £200 million across 9,000 business loans in the UK and Germany, breaking its own record for the volume of loans issued in the first quarter.

Christoph Rieche, iwoca chief executive officer and co-founder, said: “This investment will enable us to keep up with the high demand from small businesses for our ‘Flexi-Loan’ product.

“Business owners choose us over high-street banks because we make faster lending decisions, typically within 24 hours, and our loan terms are much more flexible. Both of these features are crucial for small business owners, and are only possible due to the technology we have developed over the last decade.”

He added: “With more than 130,000 small business loans processed, we have ample data to build market-leading risk models.

“This data-driven approach also allows us to lend to businesses that are outside the restrictions imposed by the high-street banks, especially when they don’t have multiple years of trading.”

In March iwoca formed a partnership with credit information provider CRIF to enable SMEs to get instant decisions on lending applications, powered by Open Banking.

According to iwoca’s latest SME Expert Index, 76% of brokers report that high street banks are reducing their appetite for funding SMEs, while 86% expect demand for finance to increase over the next six months.