A FinTech company serving banks and specialist lenders has secured £1.5 million in funding.
Manchester-based Crediflow AI automates the manual work that goes into preparing and assessing business loans, which limits how many deals lenders can take on and makes smaller loans to SMEs expensive to underwrite.
The company has developed a platform that pulls together the information credit teams currently gather and process by hand, such as financial statements, bank transactions and borrower documents, and turns it into structured credit analysis.
In practice, the platform extracts and standardises figures from a borrower’s accounts – a process the industry calls financial spreading – analyses cash flow and drafts the memo a lender’s credit committee uses to approve a loan, in each customer’s preferred format.
The platform is already used by hundreds of credit professionals across the UK, Europe and the US, supporting lenders of all sizes, from specialist lenders such as AddWorking Capital to global captive finance such as Iveco Capital.
Crediflow was founded by CEO Drey Kenfack, who has more than a decade of experience in commercial lending and private credit, including senior credit roles at Ford Credit Bank, DF Capital Bank and Advance Global Capital.
The round was led by NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, which is managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II), with investment also coming from Haatch and angel investors.
The funding will accelerate development of the company’s platform, support engineering and product hires, and help Crediflow serve more banks and specialist lenders.
Crediflow will also extend automation across the loan lifecycle, with workflows tailored to each lender’s credit policies and processes. By bringing origination, underwriting and monitoring together, Crediflow aims to reduce repeated work and help lenders grow their loan books without an associated increase in administrative costs.
“Growing a loan book takes more than finding borrowers and having capital available. You need the capacity to assess those businesses, get decisions through approval and stay on top of risk once the money is out the door. I’ve spent much of my career doing that work,” said Kenfack.
“When every transaction requires hours of manual preparation, it affects how much business a lender can take on and which deals are worth pursuing. We built Crediflow to bring that workload down and give credit teams more time to understand the borrower and structure the financing.”
Last year, Crediflow became one of eight companies to receive funding from PXN’s PraeSeed programme, a 12-week cohort-based investment programme run in partnership with the British Business Bank and NPIF II to help scale early-stage businesses.
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Joe Ball, senior investment associate at PXN Ventures, said: “Businesses of all sizes and across all sectors often rely on commercial finance for a multitude of reasons, but the processes involved in granting this finance are often largely manual, making the process inefficient and slowing down lending decisions.
“By automating this area of the sector, Drey and the Crediflow AI team are not just supporting lenders but also removing barriers for companies that need funding to grow.”
Jonathan Keeling, partner at Haatch, said: “The best B2B founders build the product they wished they’d had in their last job. Drey spent over a decade in credit roles watching good deals stall on admin, and Crediflow turns hours of manual spreading and memo writing into structured analysis credit teams can act on.
“With live customers across the UK, Europe and the US, the team has the traction to scale quickly, and we’re proud to support them on that journey.”
Sue Barnard, senior investment manager at British Business Bank, added: “Through the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, we’re backing the businesses that are helping to drive growth across the UK economy and improving productivity.
“With the opportunities from AI adoption holding the potential for further growth, innovative businesses like Crediflow AI are crucial to the UK remaining competitive internationally, while supporting the Government’s Industrial Strategy through digital and technology advancements.”