Shawbrook Bank has launched a new strategic relationship with alternative SME credit fintech, Caple.

The specialist savings and lending bank suggested the move will significantly expand Caple’s lending-as-a-service offer.

Caple, which utilises a network of advisory firms and a technology-enabled engagement model that serves to standardise and streamline the lending process for larger firms, provides banks and institutional investors with an efficient way to access and lend to larger SMEs – with the 36,000 UK firms turning over between £1m and £50m.

For Shawbrook, the new partnership will see Caple complement its existing corporate lending business which already serves mid-market SMEs with cashflow loans and ABL facilities, for a variety of commercial purposes including MBOs, investing for growth, refinance and acquisitions.

Shawbrook managing director of business finance, Neil Rudge, commented: “These established businesses, generating significant income and employing huge numbers of people in every sector and region across the UK, are extraordinarily diverse and their funding needs can often be complex.

“Shawbrook already provides a broad range of specialist funding products to address many of these needs, and working with Caple we can effectively and efficiently deploy capital to even more.”

The move makes Shawbrook the second lender with whom Caple provides lending-as-a-service, following its strategic alliance with BNP Paribas Asset Management launched in 2019.   

Caple co-founder and managing partner, Dominic Buch, added: “As our strategic relationship with Shawbrook shows, we are both completely aligned in our purpose to close the ‘missing middle’ funding gap. Despite being small in number, missing middle firms make a disproportionate contribution to the economy, employing 3.5m people and turning over £639bn combined.

“The private sector must find economic ways of supporting them. Working with Shawbrook, we intend to play our part in doing just that.”

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