UPGRADED FY 2026 GUIDANCE & ATTRACTIVE NEW MEDIUM-TERM TARGETS
LONDON, March 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Funding Circle Holdings plc ("Funding Circle" or the "Group") today announces results for the twelve months ended 31 December 2025.
Lisa Jacobs, Funding Circle CEO, commented:
"We delivered a standout performance in 2025, exceeding our expectations and hitting our 2026 revenue guidance a year early, and we supported more SMEs than ever before. Strong growth in the credit we extended led to revenue growth of 28% to £204m and profit before tax increasing to £20m, demonstrating the strong operating leverage and profitability of our platform.
"We've successfully executed against our strategy to deepen our engagement with SMEs and expand our multi-product offering, enabling us to meet more of our customers' needs. We now interact with a customer once every 38 seconds, putting us at the heart of their businesses as a trusted financial partner. Our 15 years of proprietary data and technology expertise are the foundation of our competitive advantage, allowing us to deliver a superior customer experience.
"Looking ahead, we see a significant opportunity to further grow our share of the SME finance market. Our confidence in the strength and scalability of our platform is reflected in the attractive new medium-term targets we are setting today. By becoming a more meaningful partner to our customers, we aim to not only grow our business but to support the next phase of growth across the UK's SME economy."
| Group | FY 2025 | FY 2024 |
| £m | £m | |
| Credit extended1 | 2,453 | 1,899 |
| Assets under Management2 | 2,961 | 2,833 |
| Revenue3 | 204.3 | 160.1 |
| Profit before taxation (before exceptional items) | 20.3 | 3.4 |
| Profit before taxation (after exceptional items) | 20.3 | 0.8 |
| Profit for the year (after exceptional items) | 46.0 | 8.6 |
| Unrestricted Cash4 | 100.9 | 150.5 |
Financial Highlights
- Group Revenue: Increased 28% to £204.3m (2024: £160.1m), achieving 2026 revenue guidance a year early.
- Profitability: Significant 6x growth in Profit Before Tax (PBT) to £20.3m, up from £3.4m pre-exceptionals and £0.8m post exceptionals in 2024 demonstrating the business' operating leverage. Profit for the year (after exceptional items) of £46.0m (2024: £8.6m).
- Credit Extended: Increased 29% to £2,453m (2024: £1,899m).
- Assets under Management (AuM): Increased to £2,961m (2024: £2,833m).
- Active customers: Increased 10% to 52.7k (2024: 47.9k).
Business Unit Performance
Term Loans
- Originations: Grew 16% to £1,638m (2024: £1,407m) driven by product innovation and borrower demand.
- AuM: Increased to £2,755m (2024: £2,714m) as new lending outpaced the repayment of legacy Covid-19 government-guaranteed loans.
- Profitability: PBT increased to £32.2m (2024: £19.0m before exceptional items), reflecting strong operating leverage which led to margins improving to 19.2% (2024: 13.3%).
- Robust and attractive returns through the cycle: Annualised net returns to institutional investors continued to be ~5% above cost of capital, resulting in continued investor demand with £2.2bn in committed forward flows.
FlexiPay & Card
- Transactions: Strong momentum with transactions growing 66% to £815m (2024: £492m), reflecting good customer engagement and roll-out of new features. >80% revenue from prior cohorts.
- AuM: Increased 73% to £206m (2024: £119m) as a result of new and repeat usage from customers.
- Performance: Continued progress toward profitability with a reduced loss before tax of £11.9m (2024: £15.6m loss before exceptional items). Expected credit losses remain in line with our expectations.
Capital Allocation & Cash
Unrestricted cash remained healthy at £100.9m (2024: £150.5m) following proactive deployment aligned to our capital allocation framework:
- Deliver: Group cash generative; Term Loan profits successfully funded continued FlexiPay investment.
- Invest: R&D for development of new shorter-term loan product within our Term Loans business, which has resulted in an institutional investor onboarded in January 2026 to fund future originations. The existing shorter-term loan portfolio was sold in line with its carrying value.
- Distribute: A third share buyback of up to £25m was announced in 2025. Combined with earlier programmes, £64m has been returned to shareholders across 2024 and 2025, with £11m remaining. In 2025 specifically, £30m was deployed for buybacks and £9m for the employee benefit trust.
Operational & Strategic Progress
- Powerful data driving risk discrimination: Our AI-powered credit models are 3x better at discriminating risk than traditional bureau scores. 15 years of proprietary data including 10 billion data points feeds our model development, deepens the competitive moat around the business, and enables us to say "yes" to more businesses.
- Differentiated technology: Our instant decision technology enhances the customer experience and our platform allows for fast product development and new feature launches.
- High customer satisfaction & strong brand awareness: With an NPS (Term Loans) of 79 and Trustpilot score of 4.6, our brand reputation drives consideration amongst our target market of 80%.
- Strong track record and funding pipeline: Our capital-light platform is built for scale. We have delivered consistent and robust loan returns to our institutional funders, with whom we have long-standing arrangements and £2.2bn of future forward flow capacity in place.
- Multi-product capabilities: We have diversified and expanded our product suite beyond our longer-term loan offering, with c.50% of our credit extended in H2 2025 coming from other products. Nearly 70% of our FlexiPay revenue comes from our existing Term Loan customers, as we deepen engagement and capture a larger share of our customers' financing needs. We are also attracting new audiences to the Funding Circle ecosystem. 50% of our Card customers are new to Funding Circle and our new shorter-term lending product has unlocked previously untapped segments of the SME market.
- Engaged and talented team: Our mission-led culture is a differentiator. We achieved a record engagement of 74% in 2025 and our teams received 11 industry awards, including the NACFB Unsecured Lender of the Year for the seventh consecutive year.
- Meaningful impact: In 2025, lending through Funding Circle supported over 117,000 jobs and contributed £7.9bn to UK GDP. Every £1 million of lending through our platform contributed £2.7 million to GDP, 39 jobs and £700,000 in tax revenue.
Looking ahead
Our strategic priorities are focused on customer-led profitable growth:
- Get to yes: Get the right product to the right business, through credit excellence and product improvements.
- Expand our audience: Target new segments; deepen and expand our distribution channels.
- Scale our products: Capitalise on the large market opportunity by focusing on refining and scaling our products to drive growth and margin expansion.
- Build a seamless lifetime customer experience: Deliver an exceptional experience throughout our customers' lifetime journey with our expanded product set, as their trusted financial partner.
These will deliver customer-led top-line growth and increased profit within our current product set over the coming years, while enabling the next phase of longer-term growth with continued investment in our product and technology capabilities. We are building powerful insights into our customers that provide a strong platform for growth beyond our existing product set as we become our customers' trusted financial partner.
Guidance
We have upgraded our FY26 guidance having achieved our previous revenue target a year early. We are also establishing new medium-term targets through to FY29:
| Period | Growth | Profit |
| FY26 Guidance | Upgraded to revenue of c.£235m | PBT of at least £35m |
| Medium term (FY29) | Revenue of c.£300m-£350m | PBT margins of low to mid-20s (%) |
For further details:
Funding Circle Holdings plc ir@fundingcircle.com press@fundingcircle.com
Lisa Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer
Tony Nicol, Chief Financial Officer
Headland Consultancy
Stephen Malthouse and Jack Gault (+44 20 3805 4822)
Forward looking statements and other important information:
This document contains forward looking statements, which are statements that are not historical facts and that reflect Funding Circle's beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and financial and operational performance. These forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, estimates and other factors, which may be beyond the control of Funding Circle and which may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied from such forward looking statements. Nothing contained within this document is or should be relied upon as a warranty, promise or representation, express or implied, as to the future performance of Funding Circle or its business. Any historical information contained in this statistical information is not indicative of future performance.
The information contained in this document is provided as of the dates shown. Nothing in this document should be construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, or accounting advice, or solicitation for or an offer to invest in Funding Circle.
About us:
Funding Circle (LSE: FCH) is the UK's leading SME finance platform. Since 2010, we have extended more than £17bn in credit to over 125,000 UK businesses, helping them power the economy and their communities.
By combining proprietary AI-powered credit models with a human touch, we provide a seamless experience that allows SMEs to borrow, pay later, and spend through a single ecosystem. For institutional investors, Funding Circle offers access to an attractive, underserved asset class through a platform built on deep data and a proven track record of robust returns.
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- Credit extended includes Term Loan originations and FlexiPay and Cashback card transactions.
- Assets under Management ("AuM") is the total value of term loan principal and interest due from borrowers and drawn lines of credit and Cashback card spend balances (excluding defaulted balances) previously referred to as Loans under Management and balances outstanding.
- Net income is also referred to as "Revenue".
- Unrestricted cash refers to total cash less cash that is restricted in use.
