Wiserfunding secures £3m investment from BGF
London-based Wiserfunding, a leading provider of credit risk assessment for SME lenders, today announced it has secured £3m investment from BGF – the UK and Ireland’s most active growth capital investor. This investment will support Wiserfunding in accelerating international expansion and strengthening its global position.
Wiserfunding currently serves more than 60 customers across three continents, a mix of bank and non-bank lenders, insurance firms, payment providers and asset managers. Combined, Wiserfunding’s clients have lent almost almost £3bn to SMEs in the last year.
Wiserfunding is one of the UK’s few profitable fintechs. Dr. Gabriele Sabato and Dr. Edward Altman, creator of the famous Altman Z-score, founded the business in April 2016, with a mission to disrupt the SME credit risk space and become the market standard for SME risk assessment. The company is one of only a handful of fintechs within BGF’s investment portfolio, marking Wiserfunding’s huge growth potential in the UK and globally.
With 10x customer growth in the past two years, Wiserfunding has built a strong market position in the financial industry and will use part of the investment to create new products for the supply-chain and procurement world as well as adding new unique features for financial institutions. Customers include: Revolut Business, the global super app valued at $33bn; Bank North, a new business lender; peer-to-peer lender’s Assetz Capital and ArchOver, and Fasanara Capital, an asset management company with approximately $1.9bn of assets.
Jason Snelling, business credit manager at Revolut Business said: “At Revolut Business, we are using the Wiserfunding Rating Model to support the risk assessment of our business customers exposing us to credit risk. We also plan to deploy this solution into our underwriting process to expedite decisions in the future. The team has been supportive of our needs and constantly worked to ensure the right solution for our global super app.”
Wiserfunding’s proprietary risk assessment platform uses AI to provide accurate, reliable and unbiased credit risk assessment to ascertain the credit quality of SMEs and private firms. Its unique methodology has proven to be up to 30% more accurate than competitors. It makes use of financial history as well as publicly available structured and unstructured data including corporate governance, management experience and macroeconomic indicators. The suite of models is uniquely tailored to SMEs, providing geographical and sectoral segmentation to maximise prediction power.
Gabriele Sabato, CEO, Wiserfunding said: “Access to capital is key to ensuring a post-pandemic recovery for SMEs globally, whilst the current economic landscape means that the financial industry needs a clear and accurate view of risk. This investment, alongside BGF’s expertise, will provide strategic support as we expand globally and will enable us to support the recovery of SMEs crying out for on-demand finance. With revenues having grown eight-fold in the space of just two years, we are closer than ever to achieving our mission to become the market standard for SME risk assessment.”
The deal was led by James Austin and Rowan Bird at BGF. As part of the deal, James Austin will join Wiserfunding as director.
James Austin at BGF said: “Wiserfunding is a really exciting business, with a clear path to providing SMEs with greater access to finance. The credentials of the team and the quality of the outputs are second to none. As a result of BGF’s funding, we will be able to fast track the ongoing commercial roll-out and continue with the development plan which will keep adding depth and breadth to the product. This investment also represents a great addition into BGF’s growing fintech portfolio, which we hope to expand significantly in the near future. UK fintechs should be the envy of any global market and Wiserfunding is a great example of this.”
