NatWest backed Esme Loans hits £100m of lending
Esme Loans, the SME digital lender backed by NatWest, has today achieved £100m of lending to UK SMEs.
Esme started life in February 2017 in pilot, with the aim to provide end to end business loans to UK businesses in less than one hour, using a digital platform based on technology provided by Israeli fintech company Ezbob. Esme was initially founded in response to the emergence of direct peer to peer (P2P) lending platforms across the market. The provider offers loans of up to
After 18 months of testing and scaling, Esme Loans focussed on growing the business in 2019, achieving £50m in April of this year, with a period of strong growth over the last 7 months resulting in their overall lending doubling to £100m as of today.
The business aims to double their overall lending in 2020, as an increasing proportion of the SME market looks toward fast, digital solutions for quick access to competitive borrowing, to help grow their business.
Richard Kerton, CEO, Esme Loans, said “We’re extremely proud to have reached this crucial milestone in Esme’s growth. It has been a really encouraging year, and we’re delighted that so many SMEs have chosen to grow their business with us since our launch. In the last two and a half years we’ve seen the SME sector in the UK thrive, with many businesses showing disruption and innovation. As we look to the year ahead, we’re ready to support more businesses than ever before – but in the meantime, we would simply like to thank each and every one of our customers for choosing Esme.”
The milestone tops off a year which has seen the business partner with Microsoft to build an intuitive data warehouse, as well as the accolade for ‘Most Innovative Lender’ which they won at the NACFB Gala last Thursday (28th) evening.