OakNorth Holdings, a UK-based provider of fast, flexible and accessible debt finance, secured a $440m investment.
The SoftBank Vision Fund and the Clermont Group participated in the round, which brought OakNorth Holdings’ total primary and secondary funding to over $1 billion. It is still subject to standard closing conditions and regulatory approval.
The company intends to use the funds to:
– expand its SME loan origination and credit capabilities to North American banks and lending institutions, helping them build the scale and quality of their SME loan books; and
– continue driving the growth of the OakNorth Analytical Intelligence (ON AI) platform, already being used by banks across the US, Europe and Asia with combined assets of over $800 billion.
Founded by Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman, OakNorth provides fast, flexible and accessible debt finance (from £500k to £45 million) to fast-growth businesses and established property developers / investors.
Since its launch, the bank has:
– Lent over $3.7bn, directly helping with the creation of 9,500 new homes and 11,000 new jobs in the UK;
– Raised deposits from more than 34,000 savers;
The group also operates OakNorth Analytical Intelligence Ltd., a fintech platform that helps automate the way banks penetrate the underserved and overlooked SME lending market. It uses technology to apply the rigorous credit analysis methodology used for large corporate loans in an efficient way and applies a private equity approach to portfolio monitoring.
The technology is currently being used by institutions in Asia, North America and Europe – including NIBC Bank in the Netherlands which participated in the $100m fundraising the group closed in September 2018.
FinSMEs
08/02/2019