Fast-growing enterprise adoption of business finance technology has helped Sonovate to report “record” funding volume in December of last year, “capping an overall record-breaking year for the UK lender.”
Sonovate, a Fintech lender that offers finance and tech services to businesses that engage contractors and freelancers, “funded £90 million to both existing and new customers in December 2021.”
This contributed to an “all-time record” quarter for the firm, with £240 million in funding deployed. This took Sonovate’s total funding for 2021 “to £700m, a 58% increase on 2020’s total funding of £444m.”
As mentioned in the update shared with CI, the volume of funding offered to enterprise clients over the course of 2021 surged by 144% YoY.
Enterprise clients now receive around a third of Sonovate’s total lending volume. This considerable increase in volume offered to enterprise level organizations “demonstrates the significant shift in larger companies’ preferences towards contract and freelance labor during the pandemic, and indicates the huge potential market Sonovate stands to serve in the years ahead.”
Richard Prime, Co-founder & co-CEO of Sonovate, stated:
“The future of work is fast becoming the present-day reality of work. Increasingly we’re seeing large-scale companies adapt how they staff their teams, appreciating the benefits to both businesses and individuals of contract-based and freelance working. The frictionless provision of on-demand funding alleviates an enormous pain point that faces these larger businesses as they adapt to new working practices.”
To date, over 30,000 freelancers, contractors and gig workers in over 40 different countries have received payments from 3,000+ businesses supported by Sonovate.
Sonovate’s record performance in December was “driven in large part by the expanding adoption of its business finance and technology services by consultancies, recruitment agencies and labour marketplaces throughout the world.”
During the course of 2021, 20% of all funding was “supplied to new customers acquired during the year – more than double the annual volume supplied to new customers in any other year since Sonovate began in 2014. In the last quarter of 2021 alone, Sonovate onboarded 45 new customers.”
In September 2021, Sonovate exceeded £2 billion of funding since inception. The second billion pounds of this total was reportedly funded 4x faster than the time it took Sonovate to “fund its first £1 billion.”
Sonovate envisages continued strong growth “in the coming years and expects north of 1.25 billion of total funding in 2022.”