The UK’s only bank 100% dedicated to serving farmers, the food supply chain and the rural economy has set its sights on an ambitious target to lend £1 billion across the farming and food supply chain by 2024, following a successful first full year of lending.
Since Oxbury first opened its doors to lending in February 2021 – and despite the challenging Covid environment – the bank has supported British farmers across the country with over £150m in completed loan facilities.
The bank has made a further £250m+ in committed lending offers which are currently in the process of completion. As a result, the Bank expects to breakeven by the start of Q4 2022.
Following the successful first year of operations, Oxbury has announced a new target to lend over £1 billion to the rural economy by 2024.
Oxbury launched in February 2021 with a unique offering to the UK’s farming and food supply chain, including Oxbury Farm Credit, designed specifically to address cashflow issues unique to agriculture and provide a line of credit to help farmers invest in modernising and expanding.
Oxbury’s unique service offering is quickly gaining recognition across the UK agricultural and banking sectors. The bank won ‘Best Lending Initiative’ in the 2021 Emerging Payment Awards and the Editor’s Choice Award at the Banking Technology Awards 2021.
Completion of Series C funding
Oxbury is also announcing the completion of a further Series C funding round in January 2022. Following the closure of its Series C round, the bank’s capital raised to date has increased to £48 million.
The latest capital round has included investment from leading food and agtech investor Grosvenor, alongside global fintech and technology investor Hambro Perks, joining founder investors Hutchinsons and Frontier Agriculture.
Acquisition of strategic IT partner Naqoda
Oxbury is also announcing the 100% acquisition of the bank’s strategic IT partner, Naqoda, marking the completion of the full build-out of Oxbury’s proprietary fintech platform, Oxbury Earth.
Established in 2011, Naqoda has developed an innovative, low-code development platform.
Oxbury Bank has worked with Naqoda since 2018 to co-develop a bespoke banking platform offering core banking system capabilities, using its cutting-edge cloud-based platform to offer the bank unparalleled product and systems development capabilities.
The acquisition of Naqoda provides Oxbury with full optionality on development of its future fintech platform and the ability to consider future strategic options for offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) capabilities in the wider fintech and banking market both in the UK and globally.
James Farrar, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at Oxbury Bank, commented:
“We are very proud of Oxbury’s strong first year, supporting Britain’s farmers and the rural economy and of their support for us. This support delivers momentum and a level of opportunities that has allowed us to bring forward our planned breakeven as we grow our business alongside our customers.
“Our performance since launch has really highlighted the depth of demand for our practical, engaged customer approach to backing the crucial farming and food production sector, as they face-up to the challenges of climate change and delivering security of food supply whilst building a modern, sustainable industry.
“We enjoy providing the funding to farmers across the country to accelerate their investment in the next stage of their businesses’ future.
“We are also excited by our recent acquisition of Naqoda. This not only brings our nimble IT platform fully under the Oxbury umbrella, but also creates additional revenue potential for the business, as other organisations in other countries realise the benefits of having a robust, cloud native, API centric and data-driven infrastructure at the heart of their operations.
“As the only UK bank 100% dedicated to serving farmers, we remain sharply aligned to the challenges facing our customers. We will continue to develop and invest in our market-defining tech-driven products and redouble our efforts to be the sustainable lender of choice for British farmers.”
Link to original press release here.