ThinCats' 2022 lending hits £300m, AUM at a record high

SME lender ThinCats arranged £302m of loans to UK businesses in 2022, helping push its assets under management to a record £675m. 

While the figure is lower than its £318m record in 2021, the lender is still showing strong long-term growth since its pivot away from retail funding.

Launched in 2011 as a peer-to-peer lender, the business fully closed its retail platform in 2019 after winding it down for the previous two years or so. 

Since focusing on raising capital to fund its lending from institutions, its loan book has soared. In total, ThinCats has lent more than £1.3bn to businesses across the UK with much of this occurring in the past few years.

“During the year we continued to invest across all areas of the business to enable us to deliver much higher levels of funding over the next few years as we aim to grow our loan book to more than £2bn,” said Amany Attia, ThinCats’ CEO.

ThinCats is expecting this growth trajectory to continue and is planning to increase its average loan size with more lending above the £10m level.

“Contrary to what current media headlines may suggest, many mid-sized businesses continue to perform well, even in challenging sectors such as leisure and hospitality. From our perspective, demand for funding to support both M&A and organic growth remains strong which is shown in our pipeline for Q1 2023 being at record levels,” Attia said.

“Economic uncertainty means that high street banks may become less keen to lend pushing more businesses towards debt advisory firms for help in securing funding. As one of the alternative lenders most recommended by advisers we look forward to supporting even more businesses during 2023,” she added.