Capify Announces New Growth Phase with Global Marketing Director Appointment
April 2, 2024Leading online SME lender, Capify, has appointed Ash Yazdani to oversee its marketing and customer experience functions in both the UK and Australia.
Yazdani joins from Stockholm-based Hoist Finance, where he spent four years as Global Head of Marketing, Product and Customer Experience.
Having worked previously for two of the largest global media networks WPP and Dentsu Aegis, Yazdani made the move into financial services with Think Money Group, before joining Hoist.
“To be joining Capify at this stage of its growth journey is a massively exciting opportunity,” said Yazdani.
“This is a hugely ambitious business, with an innovative vision to improve access to SME finance for under-supplied areas of the UK and Australian economy. My experience in reaching new segments, developing propositions that meet their needs, and delivering seamless end-to-end customer experience will help us on our mission to do that”.
Capify was launched in the UK and Australia in 2008, against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, when many small and medium-sized businesses were struggling to access funding from banks. Last year it was named the UK Credit Awards SME Lender of the Year (up to £1m). Founded initially in the United States in 2002, it was one of the world’s first online alternative financing companies for SMEs.
Yazdani’s appointment is the latest in a series of high-profile hires made by the alternative lender. Earlier this year, Mike Morris moved from Funding Circle to lead Capify’s advisor and introducer network in the UK.
John Rozenbroek, COO/CFO at Capify, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Ash to our growing team. In these volatile trading times, the funding needs of business changes fast. Having someone with Ash’s experience will enable us to ensure that SMEs know about – and understand – our funding options.”
“As we scale, he will also help ensure our customer touch points are efficiently optimised to continue to deliver an excellent customer experience. His appointment underlines our commitment to our UK and Australian SME market and represents a further milestone in Capify’s continued growth.”
About Capify
Capify is an online lender that provides flexible financing solutions to SMEs seeking working capital to sustain or grow their business. Originally started in the US over twenty years ago, the fintech businesses have been serving the SME market in the UK and Australia for over 15 years. In that time, it has provided finance to thousands of businesses, ensuring the vibrant and vital SME community can meet the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.
For more details about Capify, visit:
http://www.capify.co.uk
http://www.capify.com.au
Media enquiries
Sam Gallagher, Director
Capify Announces New Appointment to Lead Broker Division
March 7, 2024Leading online SME lender, Capify, has appointed Mike Morris to lead its broker business in the UK.
Mike joins Capify after five years with Funding Circle, most recently as Head of Business Development, where he was responsible for leading the lender’s broker network.
With nearly 20 years experience in the finance industry, including time at Close Brothers retail finance, Mike will focus on the growth and expansion of Capify’s introducer relationships and its marketplace offering.
“I’m hugely excited to join Capify to build out its broker programme and exponentially grow this channel for one of the first online SME lenders in the UK market,” said Mike.
“Capify occupies a vital place in the funding landscape – offering much-needed fast, flexible and responsible solutions for businesses. We’re focused on ensuring that introducers understand our offering and how we can help their clients. Our growth will then be realised by launching new products that go up and down the credit spectrum, providing the best possible service to enable the brokers, and ultimately the clients they represent, to get the funds they need to thrive in the current climate. Our goal is to have an offering for all types of businesses so we can be a one-stop shop for brokers and their clients. I look forward to Capify announcing these new offerings in the near future.”
Capify was launched in the UK in 2008, against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, when many small and medium-sized businesses were struggling to access funding from banks. Last year it was named the UK Credit Awards SME Lender of the Year (up to £1m). The company was founded initially in the United States in 2002 making it one of the world’s first online alternative financing companies for SMEs globally.
John Rozenbroek, COO/CFO at Capify, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Mike to the Capify team. Brokers play an integral role in helping businesses understand the complex funding landscape and the types of finance that are best suited to their needs. His appointment underlines our commitment to introducers and marks an exciting new stage in Capify’s continued growth.”
ABOUT CAPIFY
Capify is an online lender that provides flexible financing solutions to SMEs seeking working capital to sustain or grow their business. Alongside its sister company, Capify Australia, the fintech businesses have been serving their respective markets for over 15 years. In that time, it has provided finance to thousands of businesses, ensuring the UK’s vibrant and vital SME community can meet the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.
For more details about Capify, visit: http://www.capify.co.uk
Capify Contact:
Ash Yazdani, Marketing Director
ayazdani@capify.co.uk
Media enquiries
Sam Gallagher, Director
sam.gallagher@1473media.com
Lightspeed Capital Generated $8.1M in MCA Revenue Last Year
June 23, 2023
When Lightspeed announced it was expanding its MCA program to the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Quebec, one may have been wondering who they were. The POS e-commerce platform has actually been around since 2005 and has been slowly building up its MCA offerings. Indeed, last quarter AltFinanceDaily pointed out that the company had been increasing its volume.
As of the company’s fiscal year-end of March 31, 2023, the company had an MCA receivable balance of $29.5M, up from $6.3M YoY. Altogether, Lightspeed generated $8.1M in revenue in FY 2022, amounting to only about 1% of its overall revenue. That means there’s still a lot more room for growth.
“We believe real-time access to capital is one of the largest challenges facing merchants today,” said JP Chauvet, Lightspeed CEO in a press release. “This expansion of Lightspeed Capital provides a simple, streamlined opportunity for our merchants to invest in their business. Our goal is to help turbocharge their operations … all through a single, integrated commerce solution.
Capify Wins SME Lender of the Year Award
June 5, 2023Specialist finance provider Capify were recently crowned SME lender of the year at the 2023 Credit Awards.
The awards, which took place at London’s prestigious Grosvenor House on the 1st June and were hosted by television’s Katherine Ryan, recognise innovation and best-practice in the financial services industry.
In a fiercely competitive segment, which included banks, fintechs, asset finance providers, invoice finance companies, and P2P businesses, Capify was recognised as the SME lender of year (up to £1m lend).
Reflecting on their win, John Rozenbroek, Capify COO/CFO said “This award is recognition of the amazing work the whole Capify team have undertaken over the past year and our commitment to serving the UK’s vital SME community. For many UK SMEs, access to finance can be a real barrier to growth and we are delighted that our innovative and flexible approach to serving this segment of the economy has been recognised”.
Capify’s Q1 2023 business confidence survey revealed that 55% of SMEs are uncertain in their ability to secure finance from their traditional banking partners. “This is where we step in”, Rozenbroek adds. “As an alternative lender, we pride ourselves on our agile yet responsible approach, enabling us to promptly provide the much-needed funds to this underserved audience. In fact, we can approve and transfer funds to the applicant’s account in as little as 24 hours.”
Launched in 2008, Capify was born out of the desire to offer small businesses an alternative way to quickly access responsible business finance when many firms were struggling to navigate the impact of the global financial crisis. With offices in the UK and Australia and approximately 120 employees, it continues to support smaller businesses with funding to meet the challenges and opportunities of today’s economic climate.
About Capify
Capify is an online lender that provides flexible financing solutions to SMEs seeking working capital to sustain or grow their business. Alongside its sister company, Capify Australia, the fintech businesses have been serving their respective markets for 15 years.
For more details about Capify, visit: http://www.capify.co.uk
Capify Media Contact:
Ian Wood, Marketing Director
iwood@capify.co.uk
0161 393 9536
Shopify Capital Seeing “Incredibly Strong Renewals From Previous Borrowers”
February 16, 2023Shopify Capital originated $393.2M in MCAs and business loans in Q4, an increase of 21% YoY, the company revealed. The company also began funding small businesses in Australia last year, bringing the total countries it does business in to four.
“[Shopify] Capital has acted as a lifeline for merchants, especially through the pandemic and this tough macro environment, allowing them to conveniently access capital when they need it most,” said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein. “Capital is now available in four countries, and our machine-learning algorithms to underwrite merchants keeps getting better.”
Finkelstein also noted that the company is “seeing incredibly strong renewals from previous borrowers.”
The graphic below, illustrating the cumulative growth of Shopify Capital’s originations, was shown in the company’s Q4 earnings presentation:
The Next Frontier: Financing the ERC
January 11, 2023
“I have never sold a product that has no daily, no weekly, or no monthly payments,” said David Goldin. That is until now, he explained, because of the Employee Retention Credit from the IRS that’s sweeping the country. Goldin’s new company, Finance ERC, that he co-founded with Newtek co-founder Jeffrey Rubin, is buying the future ERC receivables of small businesses that have filed for it. A key feature? No payments.
“You basically drop off the money, they don’t pay you out of cash flow, we get paid when the checks arrive,” Goldin said. “It’s an amazing offering.”
Goldin is no stranger to the SMB finance game. He is one of the reasons that the MCA product exists today in the United States. A documentary about it was the second most watched in all of 2022, for example. And he’s still a busy guy. One of his other businesses, Capify, finances small businesses on two continents every day.
“I’m busy in the morning with the UK and I’m busy at night with Australia, but I had a lot of free time during the day,” he said about how he was able to pursue yet another venture. “I approached Jeff and we were seeing that there was a gap in the market that the checks don’t arrive.”
The ERC, a potentially generous tax credit available to eligible businesses, has recently enjoyed greater awareness since it was included in the March 2020 CARES Act. Businesses that qualify can amend previous returns to receive a refund. Folks in the small business finance industry, already in direct communication with businesses about their financial needs, have taken notice.
Finance ERC won’t do the filing itself for a business. They have to had filed already to seek out the funding, which can go up to $1 million at present. It’s the waiting game between filing and actually receiving the refund that leaves merchants in a crunch. Goldin said the wait time is “best case scenario three months, worst case scenario a year plus.” And there’s no guarantee that the claims will be paid. That’s a risk they bear.
The deals come in from a variety of sources, business loan brokers, MCA platforms, ERC filing companies and more. The funding amounts can be significantly larger than an MCA and with no payments to be made, is incredibly competitive. A number of other financial service providers are charging a fee just for helping the businesses file for the credit in the first place, which in itself can be lucrative, but Finance ERC sticks just to the funding.
“We work with the funding companies, we work with the brokers, the various ISOs, it’s a great product,” Goldin said.
But the life span of the ERC is purportedly capped. Some experts say that businesses can only amend their 2020 tax return through April 2024 and their 2021 return through April 2025 [dyor]. But then that’s supposed to be it, allegedly.
“That presumes the government is not going to offer any future tax incentives,” Goldin said. “What we’re building at Finance ERC is a platform to finance tax credits. [The ERC] is the first credit.”
The opportunity, he explained, is preparing now for what may repeat often in the future.
“We put together the right players and vendors,” Goldin said. “We’ve hired a super senior management team.” It’s a system that includes sales, marketing, operations, finance, underwriting and more, to be prepared to scale.
But even in the present, opportunity abounds.
“The best estimates I’ve read are 5-6 million ERC are still eligible,” Goldin said. “People in this industry call it America’s best kept secret.”
And thus as marketing of the ERC continues to grow all around, Finance ERC is ready to work with businesses, brokers, and filers going through the process. Businesses can even use the funding from Finance ERC to pay the fee to file in the first place.
“So now all of a sudden they put the risk to me which I’m happy to do for a file that we like, and I pay the filing company / the broker gets paid right away,” Goldin said.
PayPal, King of The Small Business Lenders?
August 3, 2022
PayPal didn’t offer precise quarterly origination figures for its “Working Capital” loan product on Tuesday, but it did reveal total originations since 2013. The number? 1.3M loans for a total of $25.6B across the US, UK, Australia, and Germany. Though there is an international component, the totals are higher than rivals OnDeck and Square Capital over the same time period.
“PayPal Working Capital (PayPal Funding Pro) expanded to France and the Netherlands,” PayPal said in its Q2 announcement, “providing SMBs with simple and flexible funding in minutes.”
The company’s small business lending operations draw little attention given that its payment business, which includes Venmo, is so massive. The size of it first became known in 2019 when it offhandedly claimed $4 billion in annual business loan origination volume for the year. That number shrank to $2.6B in 2020 during the pandemic, which was still more than all of its competitors.
In the US, its loans are actually made possible through WebBank.
More Than 70% of UK SMEs Say They’re Bouncing Back After the Pandemic
September 15, 202145 per cent of SMEs say they’ve already hit or surpassed pre-Covid levels of turnover, with a further 26 per cent expecting to return within one year
The results also show alternative lenders are now being used to finance businesses just as much as traditional banks
More than 70 per cent of UK SMEs are making strong post-pandemic recoveries, according to a new study investigating the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses.
Just weeks on from the relaxation of restrictions on July 19th, 45 per cent of SMEs say they have already hit or surpassed pre-Covid levels of turnover, with another 26 per cent expecting to achieve that within a year.
More than 250 SMEs were involved in the survey by alternative lender Capify, which also highlighted how 48 per cent of UK businesses had adapted their business models in some way to survive during lockdown. Launching online sales (38 per cent) and adopting new services or products (38 per cent) were the two most popular answers.
The findings also made good reading for employment statistics, with over 50 per cent of SMEs making no permanent cuts to their number of staff over the past 12 months, despite 64 per cent using the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) during the pandemic.
The second most popular Government-backed support used was the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), which was taken up by 55 per cent of SMEs.
The important role of alternative lenders alongside traditional banks through the pandemic was also highlighted, with 41 per cent saying they would look to traditional lenders for future loans and finance, closely followed by alternative finance companies at 39 per cent.
And with the survey finding that one in three businesses expect to need finance during the next 12 months, John Rozenbroek, CFO/CCO at Capify says the need for a range of financial options to support the UK’s economic recovery is clear.
“It’s fantastic to see that the majority of UK businesses are enjoying strong performances following the easing of lockdown restrictions, with many reaping the rewards of adapting their business models during the pandemic,” he said.
“The CJRS and BBLS clearly played important roles in keeping SMEs ticking over, but it’s also important to note that many small businesses went without much government support, having fallen through the gaps of various support schemes.
“Alternative finance has played a huge part in propping up and supporting businesses through the challenges of the last 18 months, and our data show that as an industry, it is now being considered by SMEs just as much as traditional lending options like high street banks.”
Despite the easing of restrictions, Covid-19 continues to impact SMEs with 54 per cent of survey respondents saying uncertainty over the future will be their number one challenge during the next 12 months.
“There is still a long way to go on the road to recovery for SMEs, even following the end of financial support from the Government, which is why alternative lenders like ourselves will need to be working closely with them,” added John.
“SMEs make up an incredible 99 per cent of the UK’s business population, and have companies across so many sectors have proven their resilience repeatedly, so it’s crucial for the economic recovery that SMEs continue to grow and succeed.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
The Capify SME confidence survey received over 250 responses from UK SMEs across a wide range of sectors, including Construction, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Motor trades, Restaurants, Professional Services and Transportation.
About Capify
Capify is an online lender that provides flexible financing solutions to SMEs seeking working capital to sustain or grow their business. The fintech company has been operating in the UK market for over 13 years and also has a sister company, Capify Australia, which provides similar services to Australian SMEs for over 13 years.
For more details about Capify, visit: http://www.capify.co.uk
Capify Media Contact:
Ian Wood, Marketing Director
iwood@capify.co.uk
0161 393 9536
