Funding Circle passes $5 billion lent globally, including $1 billion lent to US businesses

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Funding Circle, the world's leading lending platform for small businesses, today announced that investors have lent more than $5 billion globally to small businesses through the Funding Circle platform. This has supported a network of 40,000 businesses across the UK, USA, Germany and the Netherlands and helped to create more than 100,000 new jobs.*

Today's news follows a record November for Funding Circle globally with the business facilitating more than $260 million of lending, including $175 million in the UK (£130m), $70 million in the US and $15 million in Continental Europe (€14.5m). Together this has helped thousands of business owners to access fast, transparent finance to grow their businesses, and will lead to an estimated 7,500 new jobs.

With US businesses now having accessed more than $1 billion in funding through the platform, Funding Circle becomes the first lending platform anywhere in the world to have facilitated more than $1 billion across two markets. Since 2014, Funding Circle has helped approximately 6,700 US businesses access financing. In a recent survey of US business owners who have borrowed through Funding Circle, 92% said they would come back to Funding Circle for their future business financing needs,** 85% said their experience was faster than their previous borrowing experience, and 73% said it was more transparent.

Samir Desai, CEO and co-founder of Funding Circle said: "Today's milestones now make Funding Circle the world's largest small business lending platform by loans outstanding and new monthly originations. We are proud to see that Funding Circle is quickly becoming the first choice for finance for small businesses globally. With revenues growing 80% in 2017 and our UK business cashflow positive, we look forward to continuing to build on the strong foundations we have put in place this year and helping many more thousands of businesses in 2018."

Speaking about the success of the US business, Sam Hodges, co-founder and US managing director of Funding Circle said: "Small businesses are responsible for most net new jobs in America***. Yet too many of them can't expand because of difficulty obtaining an affordable loan. Our platform enables growth in the real economy, by more efficiently connecting this unmet credit demand to credit supply in the form of fixed-income investors."

Launched in 2010, the Funding Circle model has opened up small business lending to a wide range of investors, including 70,000 individuals, local and national government, the European Investment Bank and financial institutions such as pension funds. By improving competition in the market and reducing dependency on bank lending, Funding Circle is helping small businesses to boost their local economies and communities through much-needed job creation.

By bringing together industry-leading risk management and cutting-edge technology, creditworthy businesses typically access the capital they need in days rather than months.

About Funding Circle
Funding Circle (www.fundingcircle.com) is the world's leading lending platform for small businesses, matching investors to businesses who want to grow in the UK, U.S. and Europe. Since launching in 2010, investors at Funding Circle – including 70,000 individuals, local and national government and financial institutions – have now lent $5 billion to more than 40,000 businesses globally. Approximately 10% of investor money now comes from government sources, including the British Business Bank, European Investment Bank, KfW, the German government-owned development bank, and local councils across the UK. The business has raised £250m in equity capital from the same investors that backed Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb.       

* 'Small Business, Big Impact' research commissioned by Funding Circle from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, August 2016.
** Based on an online survey of US Funding Circle borrowers. A total of 216 business owners completed the survey between Oct. 10-30, 2017.
*** U.S. Small Business Administration. August 2017: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Whats-New-w-Small-Business-2017.pdf 

SOURCE Funding Circle

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