Challenger bank OakNorth has doubled its staff after securing more than $1 billion in funding.
The London-based unicorn has also signed a five-year deal to provide its technology platform, OakNorth Analytical Intelligence, to Dutch lender NIBC Bank.
Launched in September 2015, OakNorth offers loans of £500,000 to £40m to fast-growth UK businesses and established property developers and investors.
With a valuation of $2.8bn, it has rapidly grown to become one of Europe’s most valuable companies, having raised more than $1bn, a record for a European FinTech, from the likes of Japan’s SoftBank Group.
According to Reuters, it will provide its proprietary platform to NIBC – with whom it was already partnered – for the next five years.
The credit analysis and monitoring platform is a white-labelled technology which allows OakNorth to work with financial institutions around the world without having to launch its own banking services in these other territories.
It uses data such as the financial performance of a prospective borrower’s peers and sentiment about its brand from online reviews to inform lending decisions.
Chief executive Rishi Khosla told Reuters: “We are engaged with over 10 banks from today, and behind that there are at least another 10 which we are actively working with.”
OakNorth is now looking to expand into the United States as well as continental Europe and “two to three” Asian markets, he said.
He added that the company’s workforce has grown from just below 300 in February to 520, with software developers, credit experts and product designers among those recruited.