Bristol lawyers at Osborne Clarke advise Triver as it raises £7m to provide small businesses with instant capital

By Nicky Godding

25 April 2023

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ThinCats to provide up to £300 million additional funding for businesses through British Business Bank programme

Triver has announced it has raised £7m equity from top investors to revolutionise how small businesses can access finance.

The Osborne Clarke team which advised Triver included corporate associate director James Taylor and senior associate Adam Turner, who are both based in the firm’s Bristol office.

Partner Anika Chandra and Bristol-based senior associate Rhiannon Jones advised on employee incentives. Senior associate Jaskirat Singh, who is also based in Bristol, advised on commercial matters and associate Ed Grey advised on employment.

Leveraging open banking data and sophisticated AI, Triver funds SMEs’ short-term working capital needs, underwriting the risk of small business borrowing instantly and automatically. Faster and more easily than high street banks, it can provide advances on a business’s client invoices 24/7, offering peace of mind of simple access to capital when needed.

Through this automated approach, SMEs can access finance equivalent to up to 20% of their annual turnover, instantly, and at a more competitive rate than other small business financing options in the market. Transaction-level insights mean Triver understands the likelihood of a small business to pay back.

The venture is backed by Stride, whose team has backed early-stage businesses such as Deliveroo and Zoopla. Other seed investors include Axeleo Capital and Motive Partners, with scout investment from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Angel investors include Triver’s non-executive director Dan Cobley – former Google UK MD and co-founder of ClearScore and Salary Finance.

Triver is led by CEO founder Jerome Le Luel, one of the world’s foremost experts in deploying advanced credit analytics at world-class lenders. He is former chief risk officer at Funding Circle and former global head of risk analytics for Barclays.

Jerome is joined by a strong founding team who know how to build sophisticated lending technology. They bring expertise gained at Barclays, Capital One, MarketFinance, Credit Karma, BCG, and more.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.