Company: Sonovate
Founders: Richard Prime and Damon Chapple
Website: https://www.sonovate.com/
About Sonovate
Sonovate is the leading provider of embedded finance and payment solutions for the contingent workforce.
Sonovate’s embedded finance, payment solutions and technology services cater to recruitment businesses, consultancies, and labour marketplaces who place contractors and freelancers around the world.
Sonovate’s platform and expert service deliver swift credit decisions, same-day funding, credit insurance, and collections services, empowering companies to concentrate on expanding their business, confident that funds are in place to help meet payment deadlines.
Disruptive solutions, like Sonovate’s, are becoming ever more important as businesses wrestle with increasing costs, a workforce that is demanding more flexibility, and a shortage of talent. As the workplace evolves, contract work is increasingly valuable to businesses and employers. The global contingent workforce sector (freelancers and independent contractors) is estimated to be worth $5.4 trillion. These workers bring different payroll requirements that often cause cashflow challenges for business owners so a sizeable market exists for funding providers that can mitigate these challenges, helping businesses pay and retain these staff quickly.
Created as an alternative to traditional finance products, Sonovate is the UK’s leading invoice funding solution for the contingent workforce. The platform provides tech-driven finance and workflow solutions to businesses of any size that engage contractors and freelancers, ensuring businesses have the funds in place to pay their contractors on time and in full. By disrupting the market with its flexible funding solution, Sonovate has unlocked business finance for more organisations across the UK and internationally.
During 2022, Sonovate provided businesses with £1.1 billion in finance, a 58% increase on the £700 million lent in the previous year, and more than double 2020’s figure of £444 million. Lending hit £312 million in Q4 2022 alone – up 30% from the same period in 2021. Many of the businesses using Sonovate’s solutions are seeking funding for the first time and have ambitious growth plans – these flexible embedded funding tools can allow businesses to grow three times faster.
2022 also marked the first time the funding provided in a month surpassed £100 million, with Sonovate initially hitting this amount in October, then again in November when £110 million was loaned to businesses. This was a 22% jump on the previous highest performing month, when £90m was provided.
The volume of funding provided in 2022 increased by 50% year-on-year. Meanwhile, enterprise customers received approximately one third of Sonovate’s total lending volume.
In September 2022, Sonovate surpassed £3 billion of funding since inception – an increase of £1 billion in just 12 months as the lender continues to scale at pace. Sonovate envisages continued strong growth as it expects to remain on its growth trajectory in the UK and is entering new markets such as The Netherlands.
