Nucleus Commercial Finance, a specialist in alternative finance for SMEs, has reached hit the £500m mark in lending and says it plans to double this to £1bn in the next 12 months.
The company says its lending is up by 100 per cent since April 2016, driven by demand from SMEs looking for fast and flexible finance solutions to fund their growth. It has seen strong growth across all its products including Asset Finance, Construction Finance, Invoice Finance, Property Finance, and Cash Flow Finance.
The picture echoes reports from other lenders and industry bodies such as trade body Asset Based Finance Association (ABFA), who recently announced record levels of lending of asset-based finance. It reports a rise of 13 per cent over last year, reaching a total of £22.2bn. This is an all-time high in Britain which, ABFA says, is consistently boasting the biggest uptake of pure invoice finance in the world.
Asset-based finance is now a major part of the SME lending space and the UK’s biggest companies have played a key part in this increase in demand. Businesses with an annual turnover of more than £100m secured £8.1bn of asset-based finance in 2016, a 21 per cent increase from 2015.
Nucleus says it will continue to provide innovative forms of lending and will expand its existing team of 42 with three significant hires specialising in asset-based lending in coming months.
Chirag Shah (pictured above), CEO of Nucleus Commercial Finance, said: “The government has a range of initiatives in place to support SMEs and the lending industry has a critical role to play in developing the associated solutions and educating businesses on the options available to them.”
“The alternative lending sector has enormous growth potential and we believe that our broad product range and flexible approach means we’re well placed to increase our market share. We’re confident that we can continue the current pace of growth over the next five years and are developing our products and adding to our expert team to facilitate this.”
Nucleus Commercial Finance was founded to provide UK SMEs with alternative funding options. It claims to combine the stability and expertise of bank finance with the flexibility and speed of fintech platforms.
