Warwick Capital Partners led the follow-on investment as the business bank launched a separate £100m funding round to meet surging demand.
"Established small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) will be vital to the recovery and health of the UK economy, but it is clear that the supply of finance has been very badly damaged by Covid-19 outside of the government schemes.The time is now for Allica to scale up its operations to meet this business funding gap, bringing a blend of human relationships, deep lending expertise, and digital disruption. Together with potential acquisition opportunities of non bank lenders impacted by the pandemic, we intend to create the leading SME challenger bank for the decade ahead."
The funding from Maven will support the expansion of the firm's business units and software platform.
"GCV has developed an innovative software solution that considerably streamlines the investment process for investors, and the company is uniquely placed to capitalise on current market conditions. The company has grown to be one of the most high-profile venture builders and incubators in the North East and this is a great opportunity for Finance Durham to support a Durham-based business in not only scaling itself, but supporting the next generation of local entrepreneurs across the county and region as a whole. We very much look forward to continuing working and supporting GCV now and in the coming years."
Downing Ventures and Gresham House Ventures led the oversubscribed financing round to support growing demand for digital SME lending.
"The current crisis has accelerated the trend towards digitisation and the use of intelligent decisioning that uses access to live data. We are delighted that our investors are seeing the significant opportunity to transform SME lending to make funding more accessible, more affordable and more sustainable through the deployment of our intelligent infrastructure."
The company completed the largest convertible round in UK crowdfunding history in under 48 hours.
"This round means big things for Chip. The growth we’ve seen this year has been incredible, but it’s time to take the business to the next level. Right now we are presented with a huge opportunity to capture a slice of Europe’s €30 trillion savings market that’s ripe for disruption, and Chip is poised ready to accelerate and dominate this space as a market-defining savings and wealth management app."
