London, 9 February 2023 – Tide, the leading digital business banking platform, has completed its purchase of Funding Options, a UK marketplace for business finance, following FCA approval. The proposed acquisition was announced in November 2022.

Funding Options will operate as a separate brand within Tide, with work underway to merge Tide’s existing credit intermediation business with Funding Options. This part of the business is being led by Funding Options CEO, Simon Cureton, and is now called Tide Partner Credit Services.

The addition of Funding Options will give Tide’s more than 475,000 members (representing approximately 9% of the UK market share of SMEs) access to more credit options. Over time, members will be able to use Funding Options’ panel of more than 120 lender partners, creating a major new marketplace for SME credit in the UK.

Founded in 2011, Funding Options is a leader in SME credit intermediation. Since 2013, companies have accessed more than £700 million in vital funding via Funding Options. Businesses can raise from thousands to millions of pounds for a variety of purposes – including working capital, growth finance or even just to help them through a difficult trading patch.

Oliver Prill, CEO, Tide, said: 

“With challenging macroeconomic conditions driving a wave of business consolidation in the market, the addition of Funding Options to Tide means we can provide our members with more ways of accessing credit. Working with Simon and his team, our plans to scale our credit intermediation business will serve this real and rising need for funding. As Tide grows in the UK and globally, we’re looking at further acquisitions to accelerate our growth and add to the services and products we offer our members.”

Simon Cureton, CEO, Funding Options, said: 

“The combined capabilities of Tide and Funding Options as it relates to SME finance is phenomenal. As part of Tide, our ability to do what we do best – help businesses gain access to finance – is going to be turbo-charged, not only in the UK but also as we move into new markets. We’ll be at the forefront of the sector, driving innovation in technology, new products, new services and new features that will make a huge difference to our customers.”

About Tide: 

Founded in 2015 and launched in 2017, London-based Tide is now the leading business financial platform in the UK. Tide helps SMEs save time (and money) in the running of their businesses by not only offering business accounts and related banking services, but also a comprehensive set of highly usable administrative solutions. Tide has more than 475,000 SME members in the UK (around 9% market share).

Tide has been funded by Anthemis, Apax Digital, Augmentum, Creandum, Goodwater, Jigsaw, Latitude, LocalGlobe, Passion Capital, SBI Group, SpeedInvest and Tencent, amongst others. It employs 1,150 professionals worldwide, was awarded the ‘New Market Entrant of the Year’ at the UK-India Awards 2022 and is among the Sunday Times Fast Track Disruptors to Watch. Tide’s long-term ambition is to be the leading business financial platform globally.

– LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tide-banking/

– Twitter: https://twitter.com/TideBanking

– Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tidebanking/

– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tidebanking/

About Funding Options

Funding Options is a leading data-driven marketplace for business finance, helping SMEs get the right funding in place so they can trade, plan and grow with confidence.

In a highly fragmented SME lending ecosystem, Funding Options is fast becoming the de facto marketplace for business finance, connecting businesses, lenders and partners in a frictionless digital journey. Funding Options estimates there is over £1bn of demand for business finance from SMEs every month.

As well as employing a dedicated team of experienced Business Finance Specialists, the company is transforming the way SMEs access finance through Funding Cloud™, a fully integrated and real-time lending platform. It uses data analytics, open banking APIs and Artificial Intelligence to auto-decision the approval of loans, meaning borrowers’ needs are matched to the most suitable lenders and access to funding is possible within minutes.

Through Funding Cloud(™) loan application to credit approval could take just 20 seconds, with the record for application to funds in an SME’s bank account just 18 minutes.

Recognised as a fast-growth scaleup, Funding Options has twice been named in the top half of the FT 1000, the annual list of Europe’s fastest growing companies, Lendtech of the year in the UK Fintech Awards 2021 and is part of Silicon Valley Comes to the UK’s (SVC2UK) 2020 Scale Up Club cohort, a prestigious annual list of fast-growth UK technology companies destined for great things.

Funding Options

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FundingOptions @FundingOptions

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundingoptionsuk/ @fundingoptionsuk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fundingoptionsuk / @fundingoptionsuk

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/funding-options / @Funding Options