Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Four fintechs have been awarded £40m between them to address the £10bn funding gap caused by the lack of small business finance.
The £40m is part of a £775m programme funded by Royal Bank of Scotland as a condition of its bailout during the financial crisis.
A total of £425m will be given in cash grants to rival business banks and financial technology companies to support small businesses.
Previous recipients include Nationwide, Investec and the Co-Operative Bank.
Read: Best small business loans in the UK
Iwoca
Iwoca has been awarded £10m in funding, pledging to make £5bn available to small businesses by 2023.
The lender has pledged an additional £13m on top of the £10m grant to help open an office outside of London with at least 50 staff.
The £10m grant will expand Iwoca’s SME customer base to 150,000.
Since Iwoca launched in 2012, the small business lender has already funded 35,000 businesses in the UK, raised £350m in equity and debt finance.
Iwoca will make finance more accessible through the introduction of OpenLending, a customisable self-serve “plug & play” platform for a growing number of SME fintech partners involved in small business finance.
And Iwoca has partnered with Xero, the online accounting