Santander Working Capital Loans Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2016

Many small businesses struggle to get finance to help manage their cash flow when they need it. Santander Working Capital Loans aim to provide businesses with fast and secure access to funds of up to £100,000 within minutes. By collaborating with US-based FinTech Kabbage, our aim is provide UK businesses with the ability to access funds when they need, whether customers use these funds run their business on a day-to-day basis, or to seize growth opportunities when they need them. Rather than taking a normal approach to build the proposition internally as a Bank, the Customer and Innovation team has taken a lean and agile approach to the project. This approach, alongside the technology provided by an innovative FinTech company in this space, has helped to get the proposition live in less than 9 months. Businesses also struggle to show their true business performance when applying for finance. By using big data and APIs, we enable customers to link their main business current account during the online application so that we can view their transactions and make a lending decision based on their real business performance, rather than just a credit score. This real time connection also allows us to make a lending decision in just minutes, a process which could take weeks with other banks.