• Description: Lending to small businesses as a form of investment
  • What is good: Spreading risk to investors and providing a service to small businesses
  • HQ Location and Country: HO Victoria Street, London, EC4V 4AY.
  • Operation locations: Germany, Netherlands, UK and US

Funding Circle act as a broker between small businesses and investors. It provides business loans- which can be unsecured upto £250k - from funds raised from investors. For the investor it offers an online service and allows risk to be spread. For the business it offers simple terms with no penalties for early repayment

How it shows

Using technology - this is a technology enabled business model, although not dis-aggregating it has reconfigured a form of brokering between small investors and small business that would be very difficult, if not impossible, without the internet.

Characteristics

Good process - allowing many people with small amounts of money to invest to pool resources and risks to lend to businesses who find banks difficult to deal with. The resilience of the model will be shown over time. It seems to offer a win-win. It claims to be pursuing diversity and inclusion and aspires to be classed the best FinTech company to work for.