ThinCats, an alternative lender, has agreed a new warehouse facility with Citi and Barclays Bank PLC supported by a guarantee through the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee program.
This new facility supports lending of “up to £696m for mid-sized smaller businesses in the UK, making it one of the largest, dedicated funding lines with a non-bank lender.”
Citi and Barclays are jointly “providing senior funding and ThinCats is using its own capital to provide junior funding, with a small portion of the junior funding also provided by a leading UK credit fund.”
This is ThinCats’ second transaction “with support from the ENABLE Guarantee programme to facilitate lending to UK mid-sized smaller businesses.”
The ENABLE Guarantee program is “designed to encourage banks and other lenders to increase their lending to smaller businesses by reducing the amount of capital or junior funding required for such lending.”
Under an ENABLE Guarantee, the UK Government takes on a portion of the risk “in a transaction supporting loans to smaller businesses, in return for a fee.”
Ravi Anand, Managing Director, ThinCats said:
“Despite macro headwinds we continue to see strong demand from mid-sized businesses to fund organic growth opportunities and for merger and acquisition transactions, with considerable follow-on funding for existing borrowers. The size of this new funding reflects the maturity of our business in terms of scale and our strong overall performance. Mid-sized SMEs businesses are a critical contributor to economic growth and rightly deserve support via the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee programme. ENABLE does what it says on the tin; in this case enabling alternative lenders like ThinCats, working alongside banks, to provide bespoke lending at scale to support UK businesses.”
Reinald de Monchy, Managing Director, Guarantee and Wholesale Solutions, British Business Bank said:
“We are very happy to be part of this innovative transaction with ThinCats, which is the first of its kind under the programme to involve a direct guarantee on a portion of the liabilities in the funding structure. The guarantee will benefit mid-sized businesses across the UK by increasing available funding, which will support wider economic growth.”