UK SME lender OakNorth has recorded pre-tax profit of £33.9m in 2018, a 220% increase from £10.6m yearly profit in 2017.

The bank, which lends in the region of £500,000 to £40m to British businesses, also saw its total loan facilities grow by 160% from £850m in 2017 to £2.2bn in 2018. OakNorth has now lent over £3bn since its launch in September 2015 without having recorded a single default, said the bank.

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In the last twelve months OakNorth received over £400m of repayments. Its clients include LEON, Brasserie Bar, NetPay, TritonExec, Regal London, Baird Capital, Rockpool Investments, Galliard, Frogmore, and The Collective.

OakNorth Holdings will be donating 1% of group net profits to supporting charitable causes and social entrepreneurship.

Rishi Khosla, chief executive officer and co-founder of OakNorth, said: “To date, we’ve lent £3bn to growth businesses across the UK, helping them achieve their ambitions whilst simultaneously enabling the creation of 10,000 new homes and 13,000 new jobs. The companies we are lending to are home-builders, job-creators, productivity-boosters, and drivers of GDP growth, which have a transformative impact on our community and the health of the wider economy.

“Through the licensing of our platform, OakNorth Analytical Intelligence, to bank partners around the world, we will bring a similar impact to entrepreneurs and communities globally.”

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In 2017 OakNorth became the first challenger bank in the UK to reach a “unicorn” valuation of $1bn (£760m). The milestone was achieved thanks to $150m in funding by investors from Singapore, the USA and the UK. Total valuation will at that point reach $1.25bn.

The two-year-old bank managed to break even in its first year of operations, and offset accrued losses in the second year.

An inside source described the valuation boost as “a shot in the arm” for the challenger bank sector, while another added: “The valuation shows that the investor community believes in the ‎upper end of the SME space.”