“Fintech success story” Funding Circle raises further £80m

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform Funding Circle is celebrating an impressive start to the new year after raising £80m in equity funding, just over a week after securing an additional £40m investment from the government-owned British Business Bank

The £80m round was led by Accel, alongside existing Funding Circle investors including Baillie Gifford, DST Global, Index Ventures and Temasek.

Funding Circle says this latest investment means that is is now the best capitalist P2P lender in the small business space globally, having lent over £1.1bn to small businesses over the past 12 months.

The company, which was founded back in 2010 by Young Guns Andrew Mullinger, Samir Desai, and James Meekings, will use the backing to further develop its technology platform to “deliver the best customer experience to investors and borrowers across the world”.

Chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, has said that Funding Circle has “become a real success story for British fintech”:

“This is another vote of confidence in a UK firm that plays an important role in our economy – helping businesses to grow and create jobs.”