Iwoca Receives a Credit Line of 175 Million Euros

There is still a lot of movement in the market for financing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): The German-British fintech company Iwoca has now secured a credit line worth 175 million euros – exclusively for the German market.

“With the new credit line we want to strengthen and expand our business in Germany,” said Christoph Rieche, co-founder and boss of Iwoca. The funds are provided by the US bank Citi and by the asset manager Insight Investment.

According to its own information, Iwoca currently has loans of more than 100 million euros in Germany

“We want to double that by the end of the year,” said Rieche. For comparison: at the end of 2022, the amount of loans available was more than 50 million euros.

Iwoca itself grants loans to the self-employed and SMEs in an amount of up to 500,000 euros, but also enables other companies to offer loans to their business customers. Among others, Iwoca cooperates with Commerzbank, eBayor the financial services fintech company Qonto.

However, Iwoca has some competition in this segment: just last week, the Berlin fintech Banxware launched its first product in cooperation with Hypovereinsbank (HVB) . Since then, corporate customers of the German Unicredit-Subsidiary apply for instant financing digitally. With the offer, the bank wants to make loans “more easily accessible to its business customers and expand the business to medium-sized customers at home and abroad,” as stated in a statement from HVB.

At the end of April, the Swiss credit platform Teylor bought the crisis-hit competitor Creditshelf . The Swiss are thus expanding their market position and want to further promote consolidation in the Fintech sector. “This acquisition is an important milestone for Teylor, but only the first of many planned transactions,” said company boss Patrick Stäuble at the time of the takeover.

Expansion in sight

The examples show: The market for SME loans is competitive and in demand. “Inflation and the associated higher purchase prices mean that our customers need more liquidity,” said Iwoca boss Rieche. Banks have so far found it difficult to support the segment.

Iwoca itself is currently active in Germany and Great Britain . In addition to Citi ‘s credit line for the German market, Iwoca says it will also receive a new refinancing line just for the British market. The bank Barclays is providing 140 million euros and the investment company Värde Partners.

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(Featured image by geralt via Pixabay)

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First published in Handelsblatt. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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