Digital SME lender and savings provider, Recognise Bank, has announced ambitious growth plans following a successful £25m cash raise completed earlier this month.
Recognise, which was fully licenced at the end of 2021, has raised over £95m investment so far on its journey to provide much needed support to UK SMEs, with the Bank’s largest investor, PV27, providing the latest capital injection which will underpin a significant expansion in SME lending over the next 12 months.
Jean Murphy, CEO of Recognise Bank said;
“Following the latest capital investment, Recognise Bank is well placed to significantly grow its lending book over the next 12 months and beyond. Our parallel investment in building our technology capabilities is already delivering service and efficiency improvements all of which feed through to a much better experience for our lending and savings customers and our excellent broker partners.
Whilst the economy clearly has its challenges, we are nevertheless seeing excellent opportunities to support ambitious and experienced business customers. Our customer satisfaction ratings1 already exceed the industry averages and the digital tools we are developing will only build on this, as well as allowing us to deliver more new and exciting products.
We are delivering on our plan to support business entrepreneurs and build a compelling SME bank. The success of our business savings’ accounts is just one example. We now have thousands of new customers and we are delivering value and service to business savers so often overlooked by the large UK banks.
I am absolutely confident that the power of the Recognise brand will increasingly resonate amongst UK SMEs.”
Already delivering competitive personal and business savings’ accounts, Recognise has, to date, provided £115m commercial loans to business customers. Typical loans range from £500k to £5m and options include commercial mortgages, bridging loans, professional buy-to-let loans, with asset finance currently being developed for launch later in the year.
Recognise is determined to break the mould and is investing heavily in its digital capabilities to support a fast growing reputation for quick decisions, flexibility and speed to completion whilst balancing innovation and relationship banking.
1 Recognise Bank’s customer satisfaction for brokers and borrowers is 91% as of February 2023.
