iwoca loan £1,000,000 to small businesses

iwoca only started trading in March, but in the last 8 months they’ve lent out over £1,000,000 to small businesses trading on eBay or Amazon. Additionally the maximum term has increased to 6 months loans as standard – but as always customers can choose to repay early with no extra fees.

It’s an impressive start for iwoca, finance they’ve made available has resulted in an additional £1,000,000 of stock being purchased and sold online. Whist that on it’s own won’t make a dent in the Chancellors budget deficit, for small businesses it demonstrates the need for finance which high street banks simply aren’t making available.

“Having worked with hundreds of sellers around the UK, we have come across some pretty inspiring stories” says CEO Christoph Rieche. “People that have built multi-million pounds companies who started with just a few thousand pounds, incredibly motivated teenagers with an eye for business and others who have worked their way out of redundancy. All of them have unique stories to tell and we’re incredibly proud to have been able to help them grow their businesses”.

A key difference with iwoca is that they don’t disregard businesses that other lenders wouldn’t consider at all – perhaps the business owner has a chequered credit history. By analysing sales history and feedback scores they are able to make an accurate assessment of a business, allowing them to assess risk differently.

For example Christoph tells of a customer came to them with multiple defaults on their credit record due to an accident some years ago. They had struggled to get credit anywhere but iwoca saw a strong eBay business and understood the story behind the defaults. They were able to lend to them and since then their eBay business has almost doubled in size. Some of iwoca’s most successful customers came to them in difficult circumstances.

With e-commerce growing at double digit figures but bank lending still falling it seems demand for alternative finance will continue to grow in the years to come.