£62m block discounting facilities creates £97m of funding when combined with British Business Bank
1pm plc, the AIM listed independent specialist provider of finance facilities to the SME sector, is pleased to announce that it has recently negotiated increased Block Discounting Facilities totalling £62m with six existing funding partners offering improved flexibility. £14.5m of these facilities are increases to existing arrangements. When combined with the recently announced £35m facility with the British Business Bank this results in the Group having access in aggregate to £49.5m of additional funding in the total of £97m new and renegotiated facilities. At the end of February, the Group also announced access to international retail investor funding to augment its funding mix through the Mintos marketplace.
The additional funding will be used exclusively for the purpose of writing new business in the financing of asset and loan lending to UK SMEs.
James Roberts, chief financial officer, said:
“I am delighted that on the back of the recent announcements of our links with both the British Business Bank and Mintos, we are able to announce that the Group has further strengthened its relationships with six key block-discounting funding partners.
“Our partners’ desire to work with us has seen us move from numerous standalone smaller facilities tied to individual subsidiary entities to larger, more flexible, group-wide facilities. This enables us to move further towards consolidating an overall corporate treasury function and to benefit from the associated economies of scale as we continually look to reduce our cost of funding and increase our Net Interest Margin.
“The new facilities are also reflective of the Group’s growing reputation within the industry as an ambitious and high-quality business. Taken as a whole our recent funding developments position us appropriately to meet the continuing demand for finance from UK SMEs and will underpin our strategy for growth in the Group’s asset finance and loan finance divisions.”
