To support its global partner development and growth objectives over the next two years, Liberis, a UK-based embedded business finance platform, has received an extra £140M in financing from Barclays Bank PLC and BCI Finance. Liberis has now successfully raised £350 million in total, including more than £80 million in equity capital. Barclays oversaw a £34 million fundraising round for Liberis in December 2021.
The fresh investment will be utilized to develop Liberis’ platform, enabling it to offer more small businesses, through its international partners, fair and adaptable financing options.
The London-based Liberis platform, which was founded in 2007 by Rob Straathof, Charles Mindenhall, and Manoj Badale, employs machine learning to comprehend a customer’s risk profile and the maximum funding alternatives available to them, enabling larger origination volumes. This has allowed them to fund over 50,000 transactions totaling around $1 billion for over 21,000 SMEs in the US, UK, and Europe.
E-commerce platforms like Klarna and acquirers like Barclaycard, Worldpay from FIS, Clover, and Global Payments are all part of Liberis’ international partner network. Together with Liberis, these partners offer tailored revenue-based financing of up to £1M to as many as 1M SMEs. Payments are connected to a company’s transactions, making it easier for them to budget their spending and track their revenue.
In addition to Barclays and BCI Finance, Liberis is backed by investors like US-based growth investor FTV Capital and UK-based venture builder Blenheim Chalcot.
“This is a tremendous chance for Liberis to continue supporting SME growth across the globe, especially in such difficult times that have been thrust upon us by the COVID-19 epidemic,” said Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis. To help our partners finance their SME clients and close the widening global lending gap, they will need this funding.
“Barclays is thrilled to provide Liberis with a new senior warehousing facility, which will allow the business to accelerate expansion and continue to support smaller SME enterprises with their financial needs,” said Sean White, MD of Securitized Products Solutions at Barclays.
“We have been partnered with Liberis since 2015 and are happy to again be evolving our support for the business as it scales,” said Sam Kemp, MD of BCI Finance. Alternative finance companies, like Liberis, are committed to lowering the obstacles to accessing working capital and are crucial in giving SMEs the money they require to function and expand. We are thrilled to be collaborating with the Liberis team as they expand their worldwide reach because this is crucial during times of economic turmoil.
Image Credit: Liberis
