Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
EXCLUSIVE: Cashplus, one of Britain’s longest-established digital challenger banks, plans to lend £400m to small businesses over five years.
The fintech plans to have a 10pc market share of all new UK business accounts by 2024, compared with the 7pc share it already has today.
Cashplus applied to become a full-blown bank last year and expects to be authorized in Q1 2020 with the aim of becoming the specialist bank for small business. It already has around 75,000 business accounts.
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Unusually for a challenger bank, Cashplus has been in profit for the past eight years. In 2018-19 it generated £46.5m in turnover – a year-on-year increase of 19pc.
Should its banking licence be approved, Cashplus will fund its SME lending through the £500m of deposits it has built up since its launch in 2005.
Rich Wagner, chief executive of Cashplus, said: “The day we become a bank we will be able to unlock £400m of money and be able to lend that out to overlooked SMEs, which will almost supercharge our growth.”
Today, Cashplus has 250,00 customers, of which nearly one third are startups and entrepreneurs.
Since launch, Cashplus has expanded