Update: B-North’s Crowdcube Round Now Nearing £2 Million in Funding

B-North, a UK-based business lending company, has successfully secured nearly £2 million in funding through its Crowdcube campaign. The funding round originally sought to raise £1,750,000 and has attracted more than 365 Crowdcube investors so far. 

As previously reported, B-North is on a mission to change the face of business lending by aiming to lend up to ten times faster than other banks in order to help SMEs grow and develop. The company revealed:

“B-North wants to disrupt the £154 billion UK business lending market. The majority of SME lending is via the big High Street banks and our experience shows they often use outdated ‘legacy’ systems, rigid lending policies, and faceless, centralised processing centres. SMEs can have to jump through hoops and face an impersonal ‘computer says no’ approach, and our experience shows that it can take more than four months before they get their cash, so their development plans may have to be put on hold.”

The lending group noted it previously raised £4.2 million and is aiming to receive its banking license in the first quarter of 2020 and then will aim to start lending shortly after. 

“B-North was founded by our team with decades of experience in financial services, including launching and scaling challenger banks such as First Direct, Atom, METRO and Santander. B-North uses some of the latest cloud-based technology, married with face-to-face relationship teams to really get to know borrowers and their businesses to provide lending solutions to fit their needs. B-North has started with a blank sheet of paper and worked with SME owners to build a customer journey from the ground up, and this – together with their technology – means they can reduce time to cash for borrowers to as little as two weeks.”

B-North is currently offering 11.77% in equity at a £14,247,942 pre-money valuation through the campaign, which is set to close at the beginning of January.