A new financial services brand for the over 55s market, free2, announced the completion of a milestone fundraising round with NatWest Markets and a major European special situations fund. NatWest Markets has provided a securitisation facility of up to £200M to assist free2 in funding new customer loans. Junior debt funding of £105M is being provided by the European special situations fund which will finance both working capital and new customer loans. Together, the funding will be used to support the launch of free2’s first product beginning of June.
Free2 was set up by Paul Lindsay, formerly of The eXchange, and has a management team in place with decades of experience across financial markets. The business is focused on developing new and innovative products aimed specifically at the 55 and over the market, a group of people that the team believe have been historically underserved by financial services providers.
Importantly, free2 aims to harness the benefits of technology whilst maintaining human contact and providing a personalised service for its customers. It has developed a proprietary platform that automates large parts of the application process whilst utilising innovative decision-based technology to address suitability criteria and to identify and protect potentially vulnerable customers.
“It is largely unprecedented for a start-up to sign such significant credit facilities with institutional partners. That we’ve been able to do so is a powerful endorsement of our business proposition and the brand that free2 plans to develop.” – Jamie Robinson, Chief Capital Officer at free2