New Lender Joins ABF Portal

Liberis has become the first revenue-based funder to join the ranks of the Alternative Business Funding portal.

The SME lender becomes the 9^th member of the groundbreaking site. Liberis is a business cash advance provider that specializes in financing the needs of micro (0-9 employees) and small businesses that are typically overlooked by the banks. Liberis is not a peer-to-peer platform – it makes use of its own capital to lend to businesses. It is the UK’s largest provider of business cash advance, having facilitated more than £75 million to SMEs. Liberis can provide a cash injection of anything between £2,500 and £300,000 – based on future credit and debit card sales. Payback of the loan is made in relation to how much the business earns, and thus mirrors cash flow. It’s unsecured funding and requires no asset-backed guarantees.

Paul Mildenstein, CEO of Liberis, commented:

“It’s great to be part of this unique resource for SMEs that are unable to get bank funding, or are looking for a genuine partnership approach to funding their business. We bring to the portal another valuable and unique funding source, especially for micro and smaller businesses that need flexible finance that fits their business. The portal has fast become an indispensible source for all SMEs; so finding an appropriate source of money has never been so straightforward and with such high success rates.”

Liberis also commissioned some telling research into the SME funding plight to mark its ABF membership. The research, conducted by OnePoll, unearthed a number of key findings:

• Almost a third of micro businesses (32%) have been turned down for bank funding. As a result, 60% had cashflow issues or missed a business opportunity.
• 62% of micro businesses are less likely to seek alternative funding than their larger SME counterparts – primarily because they don’t know where to look.
• About two thirds (60%) of micro businesses said that being aware of an online portal explaining different alternative funding options would be useful.
• 32% of micro-businesses have been turned down for bank funding. 66% of micro businesses required less than £10,000.
• 49% of micro businesses wanted funding to solve cashflow issues, 46% required finance for growth/business development.
• 40% of respondents from micro businesses say that cash flow management is their biggest business concern.
• 36% of microbusinesses had sacrificed personal savings for their business.