Sonovate, a fintech lender that provides finance and technology services to businesses that engage contractors and freelancers, funded £90 million to existing and new customers in December 2021.
This contributed to an all-time record quarter for the company, with £240 million in funding deployed. This took Sonovate’s total funding for 2021 to £700 million, a 58% increase on 2020’s total funding of £444 million.
The volume of funding provided to enterprise* customers over the course of 2021 increased by 144% year-on-year. Enterprise customers now receive approximately one-third of Sonovate’s total lending volume. This significant increase in volume provided to enterprise-level organisations demonstrates the significant shift in larger companies’ preferences towards contract and freelance labour during the pandemic and indicates the huge potential market Sonovate stands to serve in the years ahead.
Richard Prime, co-founder and co-CEO of Sonovate, commented:
“The future of work is fast becoming the present-day reality of work. Increasingly we’re seeing large-scale companies adapt how they staff their teams, appreciating the benefits to both businesses and individuals of contract-based and freelance working. The frictionless provision of on-demand funding alleviates an enormous pain point that faces these larger businesses as they adapt to new working practices.”
To date, more than 30,000 freelancers, contractors and gig workers in more than 40 countries have received payments from more than 3,000 businesses supported by Sonovate.
Sonovate’s record performance in December was driven in large part by the expanding adoption of its business finance and technology services by consultancies, recruitment agencies and labour marketplaces throughout the world. Over the course of 2021, 20% of all funding was supplied to new customers acquired during the year – more than double the annual volume supplied to new customers in any other year since Sonovate began in 2014. In the last quarter of 2021 alone, Sonovate onboarded 45 new customers.
In September 2021, Sonovate surpassed £2 billion of funding since inception. The second billion pounds of this total was funded four times faster than the time it took Sonovate to fund its first £1 billion. Sonovate envisages continued strong growth in the coming years and expects north of 1.25 billion of total funding in 2022.
