Recruitment lender Sonovate reaches £55m in monthly originations

Cumulative lending now of £1.9bn to help contract workers get paid on time.

Cardiff and London-based lender Sonovate, which enables invoice financing for contract workers, has reached £55m in monthly lending after a record March.

The group has now provided over £1.9bn in funding to date, helping more than 3,000 businesses in 40 countries pay some 25,000 contractors on time.

That’s up from a £1bn cumulative lending milestone that it hit just 18 months ago in December 2019.

“In troubled times, Sonovate stood firm in our belief in the contingent labour market, providing much-needed certainty around payment to both contractors and the businesses that engage them,” said Sonovate’s co-founder and co-CEO Richard Prime.

Despite a tumultuous 2020, Prime said Sonovate managed to lend £500m during the period, a lending rate that has increased in recent months.

“The pandemic has accelerated a growing trend towards independent, borderless working—putting pressure on businesses that engage freelancers, contractors and other contingent workers to guarantee enterprise-scale payments and have robust back-office software in place.”

Sonovate raised £110m in 2019 from a host of investors including M&G, Dawn Capital and Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch.

The lender previously raised £34m in 2016 during its Series A and B rounds, both led by Dawn Capital.