ThinCats secures c.£700m funding facility through British Business Bank programme

Alternative lender ThinCats has agreed a warehouse facility with Citi and Barclays Bank, supported by the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee programme.

The programme is designed to encourage additional lending to smaller businesses, and the facility to ThinCats supports lending of up to £696m for mid-sized smaller businesses in the UK.

Citi and Barclays are jointly providing the senior funding while ThinCats is using its own capital to provide junior funding.

According to ThinCats, it continues to see “strong demand” from mid-sized businesses to fund both organic growth and merger and acquisition transactions despite the macroeconomic environment.

It has also seen “considerable” follow-on funding for existing borrowers.

 “Mid-sized SME businesses are a critical contributor to economic growth and rightly deserve support via the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee programme,” ThinCats managing director Ravi Anand said.

“ENABLE does what it says on the tin; in this case enabling alternative lenders like ThinCats, working alongside banks, to provide bespoke lending at scale to support UK businesses.”  

The programme aims to encourage banks and other lenders to increase their lending to smaller businesses by reducing the amount of capital required while the government takes on a portion of the risk, for a fee.

“We are very happy to be part of this innovative transaction with ThinCats, which is the first of its kind under the programme to involve a direct guarantee on a portion of the liabilities in the funding structure,” British Business Bank managing director Reinald de Monchy said. 

“The guarantee will benefit mid-sized businesses across the UK by increasing available funding, which will support wider economic growth.” 

This is the second transaction for ThinCats with support from the ENABLE Guarantee programme.