Iwoca closes bumper debt facility as sale speculation mounts

Monday 27 July 2026 12:39 pm  |  Updated:  Monday 27 July 2026 12:40 pm

Christoph Rieche (right) and James Dear (left) co-founded Iwoca in 2011.

Small business lender Iwoca has inked a new £250m debt facility that will help it ramp up its lending power just days after it emerged it had instructed bankers to launch a sale process valuing it at north of £1bn.

The fintech closed the credit line from a household name bank and private credit giant Waterfall Asset Management, City AM can reveal, allowing it to meet swelling demand for larger loans from Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs).

Iwoca’s own data found that Britain’s small firms are increasingly taking out bigger debt packages to help fuel their growth. The share of loans to SMEs worth between £50,000 and £100,000 has nearly doubled from 27 per cent to 42 per cent, the small business lender found, prompting it to borrow more itself to satisfy higher demand.

Over 2025, Iwoca lent 60 per cent more cash to small businesses, helping make the group one of Britain’s fastest-growing fintechs.

“This facility means we can offer more businesses the kind of support they’re looking for, backed by some of the best institutional partners in the market,” Romain Guileminet, Iwoca’s head of capital, said.

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The fresh credit facility – a flexible debt arrangement allowing a company to borrow cash freely up to a pre-agreed limit – comes as speculation builds over Iwoca’s future as an independent scale-up. The fintech has drafted in bankers at boutique tech investment bank Qatalyst to explore a sale process that could see it fetch a valuation well north of £1bn, City AM understands.

The exercise is in its very early stages, a person familiar with the matter said, with Qatalyst appointed largely to sound out the market. “There is a likelihood that nothing will happen”, the person added.

The instruction, first reported by Sky News, comes amid a wave of dealmaking in the fintech and small business lending space. Firstrand is looking to offload its SME lender Aldermore, after it became ensnared in the motor finance scandal. Oaknorth is expecting to hear whether it has been granted a federal American bank licence in a matter of months, a year on from its acquisition of the US-headquartered Community Unity Bank.

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