Folk2Folk lands £7m from British Business Investments

The marketplace lender has secured the credit line to ramp up its provision of finance to rural and regional smaller businesses.

Folk2Folk, an alternative lender providing finance to smaller businesses to regional UK SMEs, has landed a £7m investment from British Business Investments, a subsidiary of the British Business Bank. 

The Cornwall-based lender says it helps SMEs looking to grow, develop or diversify in the post-pandemic and post-Brexit environment. 

Folk2Folk, which has lent £488m  into regional smaller businesses since 2013, recently said it was on track to double profits this year after posting a pre-tax profit of £943,000 in the first six months of 2021. Last year it hit nearly the same amount for the whole of the 12 month period.

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Business Investments, says there are currently funding issues for regional and rural smaller businesses.

 ”This commitment to Folk2Folk, will help these types of businesses, throughout the UK, to access the finance they need to grow and prosper.”

Since its establishment in 2014, British Business Investments has committed over £3bn to providers of finance to UK smaller businesses.

Louis Mathers, Co-Founder & Director, Folk2Folk says by focusing on rural and regional businesses the serves an extremely viable but underserved part of the SME landscape. 

“Too often, investments overlook businesses operating outside of large urban areas. We founded Folk2Folk on the belief that something needed to be done about this regional disparity in funding. We felt a greater connectedness was needed between investors and regional Britain, and Folk2Folk was founded in early 2013 to be a mechanism to enable this. Together with our investors, we are helping to level the playing field for regional businesses.”