Small business lender iwoca raises €100m for German loan growth

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
27th February 2020

iwoca, the small business lender, has landed €100 million ($109 million) in fresh funding from Insight Investment – one of the world’s largest asset management companies – to finance new loans to businesses across Germany.

Last year, the UK-founded lender doubled its headcount in Germany from 50 to 100, and it also made a promise to house at least 100 employees in the UK’s northern city Leeds by 2023, suggesting a significant amount of the capital will also go to internal expansion.

iwoca’s COO Seema Desai, LEP chair Roger Marsh OBE and iwoca’s CEO and co-founder Christoph Rieche

Now armed with more than €500 million in equity and debt finance, the start-up, co-founded by a German-British duo, is set to quickly grow its €1 billion in loans issued to small businesses so far.

The company says it is the largest fintech small business lender in Germany, pinning itself against rivals in country such as CrossLend – which raised €35 million last October.

“This investment in iwoca’s fintech loans allows us to diversify into a new sector in Europe’s largest economy and we believe it also provides our clients with diversification and high-quality cashflow streams,” says Insight Investment’s head of secured finance Shaheer Guirguis.

iwoca’s CEO and co-founder Christoph Rieche calls its new investor “a very agile and responsive partner” which is going to provide it “the perfect basis” for its “new phase of growth” in Germany.

So far the 2012-founded lender says it has financed 50,000 small businesses, but has not broken down its spread of customers across the UK and Germany.