Thincats
“Can a specialist cashflow-based SME lender use open banking data and flexible product structures to consistently serve the underserved mid-market gap between online lenders and high-street banks?”
ThinCats was established as a UK alternative lender serving mid-sized SMEs (£0.5m–£40m gross assets) that fall between purely online lenders and traditional bank lending thresholds. The company differentiates through cashflow/income-based lending rather than pure asset-backed lending, enabling it to serve businesses that lack sufficient assets for traditional bank models. It was subsequently acquired by and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Shawbrook Group PLC. It has expanded its product suite beyond vanilla term loans to include Agile Capital (term loan + RCF hybrid) and Transitional Capital (back-ended repayment structures for buy-and-build investors), and has integrated open banking via Salt Edge to automate credit assessment and portfolio monitoring.