Start-up Nimbla nabs £5.1m funding to scale embedded insurance services

UK-based SME-focussed fintech insurance start-up Nimbla has secured £5.1 million in a funding round led by Silicon Valley venture fund Fin VC with participation from Barclays Bank, that it says will help in targeting the “£2.6 trillion embedded fintech opportunity”.

The funding comes as Nimbla seeks to scale its operations with increased demand from embedded credit risk solutions through its API with banks and alternative lending platforms.

Founded in 2016, Nimbla’s proprietary digital automated credit risk platform enables small and medium-sized businesses to process requests immediately and provide real time quotes. The company has thus far processed invoices worth £2.5 billion, and said that the volume of new business almost tripled during the pandemic as economic uncertainty and supply chain concerns increased.

Nimbla has worked directly with businesses and brokers to provide invoice insurance cover, and recently has launched a new API for banks, fintech lenders and B2B platforms to enable more business to access the service. It partnered with Barclays Bank in 2020 to give their one million small business customers the ability to take out insurance against individual invoices, rather than the whole book, the company said.

“We have been growing steadily over the past few years, ramping up our technology and team to better understand businesses, the nature of B2B debt and to make faster decisions to serve our growing customer base,” said Flemming Bengtsen (pictured), chief executive officer of Nimbla. “2020 was a seminal year for Nimbla, at a time of global crisis, we were there for businesses enabling them to trade with a peace of mind and giving them confidence to carry on.”

“This funding round will enable us to expand our platform, grow the team as we enable a confident and trusted trading environment for businesses across the UK and beyond,” he added. “We have built a powerful and robust credit risk model, automated large parts of the process and have now launched a new API to enable others to embed seamless credit risk solutions into their platforms.”

Henry Cashin, head of EMEA at Fin VC, commented: “Nimbla is giving businesses the confidence to trade again. They have a proven credit risk model and its tech is being adopted by top tier banks and a host of lending platforms. We believe this will scale their reach and help more businesses benefit long term.”

Looking ahead, Bengtsen said: “UK companies have added £1.9tn debt in 2020 to their balance sheets, taking the total amount outstanding to over £6.6tn. This number was inflated by the various government loan schemes. Over half of them are carrying ‘toxic debts’ which carries enormous risk for their trade creditors, there is a huge opportunity and responsibility for Nimbla to give companies a peace of mind and insure their invoices against insolvencies.”

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