In an exclusive interview with Damon Walford (pictured above), the ThinCats CDO told Bridging & Commercial that he believed the company would grow significantly in 2018.

"ThinCats is in advanced discussions with a major financial institution to secure an additional £200m funding line to help support our ambition to fund trading SMEs across the whole of the UK.

“The way things are going, we expect to further build on what we achieved in 2017.

“January [has been] our strongest month ever for enquires, an increase of 50% on our average in Q4 - lead flow has gone through the roof, which is really great.”

The driving force behind these developments has been the significant increase in the origination team.

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Damon continued: “We have historically been very strong in the Midlands, because that’s where we set up, so the challenge has been to expand that geographically.

“So we now have experienced originators in London, Glasgow, Newcastle and Manchester, we’re recruiting for Yorkshire, we [also] have [originators in] both the East and West Midlands.

“We have recently recruited an SME expert in Cardiff to work alongside our existing originator in the South West, we’ve got an experienced originator for the south coast, and we have just recruited a great representative for the northern Home Counties.

“So that takes us up to 12.

“This time last year, we only had three people on the road, so we have actually quadrupled our origination presence, which is a good indication of how busy we are.”

ThinCats also plans to launch its Innovative Finance Isa before the end of the 2017/18 tax year.