Regulator awards SME lender Cashplus full UK bank licence
SME lender Cashplus has been granted a full UK bank licence by the Prudential Regulation Authority with immediate effect.
As a bank, Cashplus can use part of its £500m of customer deposits for lending and aims to provide £1bn of credit to UK small businesses to support the UK’s post-Covid-19 recovery.
The firm, headquartered in London with operations in Liverpool and Birmingham, was founded in 2005 and has since served over 1.6m customers with banking and lending services aimed at UK small businesses and consumers.
The company generated around £50m in revenues in 2020 and has recorded nine consecutive years of operating profit since 2012 while maintaining consistent revenue growth.
Founder and CEO Rich Wagner said: “Cashplus has reached this milestone at the moment when UK small businesses need us most.
“These same small companies will be crucial to the UK’s economic recovery and they will need a bank that takes them seriously, providing what they need to be successful. We’ll be welcoming customers, opening up lending and delivering enhanced products to support them through the challenging months ahead.”
Cashplus currently serves 7% of all new UK businesses and, as company formations hit record monthly highs during the Covid-19 crisis, Cashplus expects to grow its share of this market to at least 10% within the next three years.
To achieve this, the company says it will focus its product and customer service development around the needs of the 600,000 new companies registered in the UK each year and the 5.7m businesses with fewer than 10 employees.
