Local lender for UK regional SME's, FOLK2FOLK has announced it's on track to achieve a profit of around £2-million for its 2021 financial year, effectively doubling the profit of the previous year.
A 2021 pre-tax profit of £1.98m will be FOLK2FOLK’s largest annual profit to date and marks three consecutive years of profit for the company.
Launceston-based FOLK2FOLK also hit several significant growth metrics during 2021, including a return to its pre-2020 track record of double-digit loan book growth, expansion into Northern Ireland and securing a multi-million pound investment commitment from British Business Investments. During 2021, FOLK2FOLK lent a record £108-million to businesses across Cornwall, Devon and other regions of the UK, which brought their total lending to more than half a billion.
Roy Warren, FOLK2FOLK managing director, said: “I am proud that during 2021 we delivered on what we said we’re going to do and are financially robust. But we’re not stopping there, we have ambitious growth plans for this year which are already moving ahead at pace. We see huge opportunities to write considerable volumes of loans across the UK, and Institutional investment is a key part of our strategy to support that. ”We also expect the alternative finance market to continue to consolidate and present opportunity for us to acquire loan books from other platforms. We see this as a growth area for us and are actively looking within the market to move forward with this. “We have to anticipate that 2022 is likely to be a challenging year for everyone, with a backdrop of inflation, rising interest rates, and hostilities in Eastern Europe all feeding into an uncertain external environment. This makes having a solid and sound base for any business ever more important. With only a small handful of lending platforms turning a profit, our strong profit levels evidence FOLK2FOLK’s stability in terms of finances, business levels and governance, and we know this supports investor and borrower confidence in us.”