Technology

Posted on February 18, 2019 by staff

iwoca in mammoth £150m fundraise

Technology

iwoca, one of Europe’s fastest growing small business lenders, has raised an additional £150m in equity and debt capital.

The investment brings iwoca’s total funding to £350m.

iwoca’s most recent fundraising included a Series D equity round led by Augmentum Fintech, the specialist FinTech venture capital investor.

NIBC Bank and other existing investors, including Prime Ventures, also participated.

The capital raised will enable iwoca to support more small business owners across the UK, Germany and Poland.

iwoca, which featured on our FinTech 101 list last year, reached profitability in 2018, while doubling its revenue in each of the last three years.

Its award-winning technology and operations has funded more than 25,000 small businesses to date.

Christoph Rieche, co-founder and CEO of iwoca, said: “iwoca continues to grow rapidly while bank lending to small companies has dwindled. We are on track to fund 100,000 small businesses in the next five years and our mission is to help one million small businesses succeed by opening up access to finance.

“This fundraise enables us to empower many more small businesses and we are excited that we could win Augmentum Fintech to join our next phase of growth.”

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech, said: “As an SME lender, iwoca is unique for its scale in both the UK and Germany.

“The factors that underpin iwoca’s success are difficult to achieve in combination.

“We are confident that iwoca will emerge as one of the few winners in the SME non-bank lending space.”

Paulus de Wilt, CEO at NIBC Bank, said: “We are proud to partner with iwoca, continuing to develop relationships with FinTech companies to add value and find synergies.

“This investment truly matches our core values of entrepreneurship and inventiveness, and helps us to further boost innovation.”