equipal®️ secures £16.25m combined equity investment and forward-flow facility

equipal®️, a fintech funder of business equipment, has secured £16.25 million in combined equity investment and forward-flow funding from Altum Capital Management, in a deal that will support the company’s growth in the UK asset finance market.

The funding includes a £1.25 million equity investment alongside a headline £15 million forward-flow facility, composed of initial full lease funding and contingent junior funding, with Altum Capital providing both the equity injection and funding capacity.

equipal®️ operates a proprietary platform, embedded at the point-of-sale with more than 75 equipment vendors across the UK. This enables equipment vendors and their customers to organise fast, automated asset finance for equipment purchases of up to £250,000. Serving sectors including manufacturing and transport, equipal®️ finances a range of hard assets, from CNC machines to coaches on up to five years with flexible terms.

Using its proprietary technology, the company has accelerated and streamlined what has traditionally been a slow, intensive, email-heavy process. Competing with the traditional asset finance industry, equipal®️ offers a fully digital, integrated online platform that makes arranging asset finance faster and easier for equipment vendors and their customers.

To date equipal®️ has recorded a default rate of 1.26% and zero credit losses to date, while 69% of customers who have sourced funding once through the platform have returned for additional finance.

The funding comes at a challenging time for platform lending and the broader private credit market, with many small platforms constrained by investors retrenching. While backing equipal®️’s credit capability, business model and growth plans, Altum Capital has structured the transaction conservatively ensuring strong credit enhancement and robust legal and corporate protections.

The funding will support equipal®️’s continued growth, including hiring across business development, marketing, operations, credit and data where the team expects to grow to 12 in the next year.

Eamonn McMahon (pictured), founder of equipal®️, says: “I’m thrilled to get this deal over the line. While the market environment has been challenging, our operating resilience and discipline on credit, while keeping the customer front and centre, has helped us get here. The structure of this deal allows for additional scale with senior funding in the years ahead and critically, provides us with operating flexibility. We look forward to scaling up, in partnership with our new shareholders and funders, Altum Capital.”

The relationship between equipal®️ and Altum Capital Management also reflects a longstanding connection between the firms’ leadership teams. When equipal®️ founder Eamonn McMahon began his career in financial markets at Bear Stearns in London, Altum Capital founder Marjorie Hogan was leading proprietary trading globally for Bear Stearns from New York.