Fintech MarketInvoice is ‘taking the fight to the banks’ and targeting £900 million in lending this year

MarketInvoice co-founders Anil Stocker, left and Ilya Kondrashov.MarketInvoice

LONDON — Fintech company MarketInvoice is planning to more than double the size of its business in 2017 as it launches new products in a bid to become the destination for small business short-term finance.

MarketInvoice announced on Thursday that it hopes to reach £2 billion in total lending by the end of 2017, which would represent £900 million in lending in 2017 and 133% growth on its 2016 volumes.

Founder and CEO Anil Stocker told Business Insider: “It took us five years to do our first billion; we’re trying to do our second in a year. It’s very exciting.”

Peer-to-peer platform MarketInvoice started out in 2010 as a platform to let professional investors lend money to businesses secured against individual unpaid invoices.

The company is betting on the launch of a new product, MarketInvoice Pro, to fuel growth. The new product lets businesses effectively draw lines of credit from investors, secured against their collected unpaid invoices rather than individual ones.

Stocker told BI: “We’ve built a lot of technology that integrates with accountancy systems and what that means is companies can, with a few clicks, apply. You have an amount of invoices outstanding to be paid, let’s call that £1 million, we would then offer credit of up to 80% of that, which you can draw down at any time. Then the invoices get repaid, you paid back, and you can redraw. It’s kind of like a revolving line of credit.”

The credit line product takes MarketInvoice into a £20 billion a year market and caters to bigger businesses than MarketInvoice currently deals with.

It’s a proper new product in taking the fight to the banks and moving into the mainstream

Stocker says: “These are for businesses that are slightly larger, here you have to have a minimum turnover of £1 million to qualify for this product.”

“We can write credit limits of anywhere between £100,000 up to about £5 million. I think the sweet spot once we get started will be about £500,000 to £2 million. It quickly ramps the amount of monthly volume that we should be doing once we start doing these customers,” Stocker said.

He added: “We’re very excited about it because it’s a proper new product in taking the fight to the banks and moving into the mainstream. It’s a much bigger market and deeper market in terms of the funding required.”

MarketInvoice raised £7.2 million from Polish private equity group MCI Capital last July.Stocker says the funding helped pay for development of MarketInvoice Pro and says a second new product is slated for launch later this year, although he wouldn’t be drawn on the details.

Asked whether the ambitious growth targets are mandated by MarketInvoice’s new investors, Stocker said: “We don’t have any pressure to grow by a certain amount. Companies that take on venture funding tend to be ambitious companies. We want to grow as fast as possible without taking unnecessary risks.

“If you’re in marketplace lending or invoice financing, it’s not just a case of growing at any cost, because anyone can give out risky loans and they default. You have to make sure that your growth is sustainable and you’re making the right decisions.”

Stocker said Brexit has had little effect on MarketInvoice’s business but has led to an uptick in export invoices that are looking to be financed as more businesses look to trade overseas.