OakNorth Holdings announced that it has secured a $440 million investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund and the Clermont Group. OakNorth provides SME loan origination and credit capabilities to North American banks and lending institutions, and monitors its loan portfolio using its own big data and machine learning platform.
The Vision Fund will invest $390 million while Singapore-based conglomerate Clermont Group will cover the remaining $50 million, in what is believed to be one of the largest European fintech fundraisers so far. This round takes the fintech’s total primary and secondary funding to over $1 billion, and values it at $2.8 billion, making it the most valuable fintech venture in the region, the company told the Nikkei Asian Review.
The financing will be used to launch its lending operations in the US. OakNorth has loaned over $3.7 billion to British businesses without a single default or late payment since its launch in September 2015. In addition to providing billions of dollars of funding to SMEs, OakNorth’s loans have directly helped with the creation of over 9,500 new homes and 11,000 new jobs in the UK.
“OakNorth is delivering a highly differentiated service to a key segment of the market that has historically been underserved by commercial banks”, said Munish Varma, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “The company has a clear and ambitious vision to scale globally and we are excited to work with them to achieve this goal.”