£6m fundraising scheme launched to help businesses grow over next five years

SME finance platform Alternative Business Funding (ABF) has announced a £6m fundraising scheme.

This is said to be in tandem with its aims to expand and increase company registrations to over 160,000, helping businesses find over £500m of finance over five years.

ABF, which has designated status as approved by HM Treasury on the recommendation of the British Business Bank for the government-led Bank Referral Scheme, was launched in 2014 as the UK’s ‘first collaborative SME funding platform’, backed by Vince Cable.

The company has appointed boutique advisory firm London-based Lazarus Consulting to canvass interest with a view to identifying a new investment partner by the end of 2019 to extend ABF into a wider marketplace.

ABF’s chairman, Adam Tavener, working with HM Treasury to deliver the scheme, said: “ABF is at a very exciting time, and with the ‘go compare’ culture rapidly growing in popularity - we see that it is only a matter of time before, as with other financial products, those businesses seeking commercial finance will go online to compare the funding solutions open to them, before even visiting their bank.

“With our strong brand and scalable technology, we also see a real opportunity to move into other business services such as equity finance, personal lending, business banking, and credit cards.”

The investment will be specifically used to accelerate the development of ABF’s financial technology, enabling the platform to provide both predictive lending powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to customers, and fully capitalise on the open banking opportunity.

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