UK-based alternative lender ThinCats has raised £160 million in strategic investment from Wafra Capital Partners (WCP).
Amany Attia, CEO, ThinCats, in a statement said: “This is an important next step for us as a lender and allows us to bring the benefits of non-bank lending to a wider universe of mid-sized businesses.”
ThinCats, which started as a P2P property lender in 2011, had to shut the business and pivot to an alternative funding model for SMEs in 2019. Since then, the firm has seen its loan book increase tenfold over the past three years to more than £500m, ThinCats said in a blog.
Over the last three years, our outstanding loan book has increased more than tenfold from £49m in April 2018 to £508m in April 2021. This means that more than £0.5 billion is currently hard at work supporting mid-sized businesses across the UK.
In the past three years, ThinCats has transformed its retail platform and hired ex Lehman Brothers securitization chief Amany, as its CEO to power up its lending.