UK specialist lender and asset finance provider Shawbrook Bank has announced a new strategic relationship with alternative SME credit fintech, Caple.
The relationship will significantly expand Caple’s lending-as-a-service offer, which provides banks and institutional investors with an efficient way to access and lend to larger SMEs, or the 36,000 UK firms turning over between £1m and £50m.
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Caple is an independent company, which uses a network of advisory firms and a technology-enabled engagement model that serves to standardise and streamline the lending process for larger SMEs.
“Caple provides growth credit where banks cannot fully satisfy the need,” the company said on its website. It describes itself as a European specialist in SME growth credit providing credit “in close cooperation with BNP Paribas Asset Management,” it said.
“We interact with our SME clients through a network of independent and experienced professional advisors; our Partners. We support them with our technology and expertise in SME credit and provide the link to the institutional distribution capabilities of BNP Paribas Asset Management,” Caple said on its website.
For Shawbrook, Caple will complement its existing corporate lending business which already serves mid-market SMEs with cashflow loans and asset-based lending facilities for a wide variety of commercial purposes including MBOs, investing for growth, re-finance and acquisitions.
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By GlobalDataWorking with Shawbrook to develop a new cashflow loan proposition focused on management buy-ins, Caple will source new lending opportunities (£1m – £10m) from larger SMEs through its network of accountants and corporate finance advisors.
Using its credit platform, Caple will assess suitable loans and provide in-depth credit analysis to deliver complete and standardised loan files to Shawbrook Bank, which will decide on the loan.
Neil Rudge, managing director of business finance at Shawbrook Bank, said: “These established businesses, generating significant income and employing huge numbers of people in every sector and region across the UK, are extraordinarily diverse and their funding needs can often be complex. Shawbrook already provides a broad range of specialist funding products to address many of these needs, and working with Caple we can effectively and efficiently deploy capital to even more.”
Dominic Buch, co-founder and managing partner at Caple, said: “As our strategic relationship with Shawbrook shows, we are both completely aligned in our purpose to close the ‘missing middle’ funding gap. Despite being small in number, missing middle firms make a disproportionate contribution to the economy, employing 3.5m people and turning over £639bn combined. The private sector must find economic ways of supporting them. Working with Shawbrook, we intend to play our part in doing just that.”
Shawbrook is the second lender with whom Caple provides lending-as-a-service, following its strategic alliance with BNP Paribas Asset Management launched in 2019.
