We've been supporting UK SMEs for 10 amazing years now and we really couldn't be prouder. We've evolved over the years adding products and brilliant people to our team along the way. We can't wait to see what the next decade has in store for us...
We are a leading Fintech ensuring businesses get bespoke funding solutions at lightning speed. We're armed with the best-in-class technology which enables us to provide decisions and funds rapidly, with accuracy and fairness every time.
With funding between £3k and £50m through both secured and unsecured products, our customers have plenty of choice and flexibility to help them thrive.
Our award-winning tech has meant we're able to streamline and automate the entire process to deliver a hassle-free, effortlessly simple funding journey for both direct customers and the introducers we work with.
This is the year it all began! Our CEO, Chirag Shah, realised there was very little choice for businesses wanting access to finance, and from that, the very concept of Nucleus was formed. With a simple mission to provide UK SMEs with a “true alternative to the banks”, Chirag launched Nucleus, and his small team of 3 employees started to work their magic.
A big step in the right direction for us at Nucleus – we expanded into a new market and officially launched our Invoice Finance product. We realised that lenders often have to shoehorn the needs of businesses into the product they are offering, meaning SMEs don’t necessarily get the product that best suits their needs. Lenders are not flexible enough, and we decided this had to change.
We hit our £1M funded milestone – a very proud moment for the Nucleus family. With 8 employees and an important funding record under our belt, we launched our third product – Construction Finance. Securing construction project funding had long been an enormous challenge, so we decided to remove the stress typically involved by providing access to a confidential, pre-agreed funding line.
Things took off rapidly the following year, and we found ourselves celebrating our £50M funded goal even faster than anticipated. After seeing a record number of enquiries and deals completed, we felt it was time to branch out further, and our Asset Based Lending solution was born. Our approach to ABL was simple – we wanted to tailor a package of facilities that not only covered the anticipated needs of a business but also the inevitable bumps along the road.
Just a year later, we doubled our amount funded figure and hit the £100M lent mark. After being shortlisted the previous year, we finally got to take home our ICM British Credit Awards trophy after being awarded Commercial Finance Provider of the Year.
Exactly five years after our journey started, we looked back and celebrated how far we’d come in such a short space of time. With a whopping £250M funded and 42 employees on our payroll, there really was no stopping us now! First, we launched our Property Finance product so that businesses could utilise their commercial and residential property to unlock more significant amounts of funding. We then rounded off the year by launching our popular Cash Flow Finance loans so that SMEs could access unsecured funds too.
Over half a billion funded! We’d been making waves in the alternative finance industry for some time now, and after seeing an increased demand in the mid-market, we boosted our funding threshold to £50M. After launching two brand new products (Business Cash Advance and Education Finance), we finished the year on a high at the Credit Awards, leaving victorious as the SME Lender of the Year.
Unrivalled due to our vast product suite (7 products and counting…), we zoomed past our £1BN lent goal and took home SME Lender of the Year at the Credit Awards for the second year running! We pledged to digitise the end-to-end user journey for our customers using AI and machine learning and fine-tuned our exciting introducer portal ahead of its imminent launch.
We launched our introducer CRM myNucleus nationwide, and our introducer network liked what they saw! With the ability to submit multiple deals in minutes, track their progress and provide any documentation at just the click of a button, our industry-leading platform went down a treat. Our 125 strong team were basking in the company’s glory after winning Best Alternative Business Finance Provider at the British Bank Awards.
Finding triumph in an otherwise defeatist year – even with a world pandemic lurking over the entire industry, we vowed to continue supporting the UK’s economic backbone and did precisely that as a proudly accredited CBILS lender. We lent almost £450M to SMEs in 2020 at a time when they were struggling to survive the pandemic – our proudest achievement to date.
All good things come in threes, and we experienced this first-hand last year. We won Best Alternative Business Funding Provider at the Business MoneyFacts Awards, Commercial Lender of the Year at the Lending Awards and Alternative Finance Platform of the Year at the AltFi Awards.
Ten marvellous years later, and here we are, still helping businesses thrive and grow by revolutionising how they access finance. Having harnessed the power of technology and innovated at every stage of our journey, we’re able to provide decisions and funds rapidly, with accuracy and fairness every time.
We’ve officially lent over £2BN to UK businesses, and we don’t ever plan on slowing down. We launched our Business Growth Loans after CBILS ended to ensure businesses have access to the vital finance they need to survive and recover, plus we’re also supporting SMEs as an accredited RLS lender.
We started with a mission to provide UK SMEs with alternative funding, and we intend to continue in the same vein – except now we have more options, a decade’s worth of valuable knowledge and award-winning tech at our core. We say… bring on the next ten years, we’re excited to help thousands more businesses prosper, and we're definitely more than ready.
It's true, Covid doesn't discriminate and we've all had to learn that the hard way. But nothing is going to stop us from helping UK businesses, not even a world pandemic!
We already had our ducks in a row, so the transition to working remotely throughout multiple lockdowns was a breeze! Covid-19 just meant we had to pivot slightly and adopt additional tech a little faster than we'd anticipated as we knew we needed to provide decisions that were accurate, fair and fast.
We became an accredited lender for CBILS, paying out over £450M in 2020. We're still supporting businesses through the Recovery Loan Scheme with loans between £30k and £10m. But help comes in many forms, which is why we launched our Coronavirus Hub to help guide and inform businesses during a particularly confusing and difficult period.
Covid-19 Hub
We’re big believers in the idea that a business is nothing without its people, so we do everything in our power to keep them. We spend a significant amount of time in training our junior team to rise to the level of senior positions and ultimately, we want to ensure that everyone is coming to work because they want to.
Everyone's opinion matters and everyone in the company knows that. We were adamant that we wanted to create a culture that motivates people and we encourage everyone to contribute. After all, it's no use hiring great people and then not listening to them.
Here's what members of the Nucleus family have to say about our company culture. Good vibes only!
I joined Nucleus 8 years ago, planned to stay a couple of years before retiring. Still here!
It’s been a pleasure working with a small team of very experienced colleagues and I really enjoyed contributing on some challenging, interesting and unusual transactions, testing our skills and ingenuity to write profitable business
Sales Director
It’s a great environment to work in and the people are so helpful – they are less like colleagues and more like friends!
Accounts Analyst
Great team to work with, never a dull moment!
Business Support Executive
I joined Nucleus 5 years ago when they were a smaller organisation, since then they have grown successfully and I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the journey.
Risk Manager
When joining Nucleus it was clear that I was working around like minded people who are passionate about their job. Working in collections there is never a dull day and I am proud in the way the team have performed over the last 2 years especially. Much more to come… The TEAM is strong!
Credit Controller
To understand where you are heading, it is important to take a look back on the journey you’ve already trod. Looking back on my journey that started 4 years ago, it is truly inspiring to see how much we have grown as a business. Our utilization of best-of-breed technologies to integrate, automate and make decisions in seconds, brings us one step closer to Operational Excellence.
Director of Information Systems
Simply Amazing defines Nucleus and the team. Incredible colleagues that are so encouraging and that is what is great about the work culture here.
Business Support Executive
Nucleus is an exciting and dynamic place to work. Whilst the business has grown beyond recognition in the four years I have been here, supporting UK SME's remains at the heart of everything we do. I am particularly proud of the support we have provided to customers and prospects throughout COVID and look forward to being a continuing part of the recovery story.
Corporate Sales Director
Having found a company as good as Nucleus, I count myself very lucky. I've been with them for a very long time and have seen the transformation from being a very small company to a finance company that has paid out billions. My job is exciting and I love that I can make a positive difference in the lives of our customers.
Risk Manager
My time at Nucleus has been amazing. I started during the pandemic and despite the unprecedented times of not physically meeting people and having to work from home, everyone was welcoming and more than helpful. I felt like I had fitted in to the team within no time. I love working at Nucleus because of the technology we embrace and the constant improvements we do to our product offerings. The culture is vibrant, helpful and family-esque
Risk Director
Since launching as an alternative lender in 2011, we've been working tirelessly in the background adopting as much technology as we can to better serve our customers - and we're still going!
Through investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning and other geeky stuff, we transitioned seamlessly to being a leading Fintech with innovative, award-winning technology at its core.
Through our one-of-a-kind CRM myNucleus, introducers can upload deals, track their progress and provide their clients with a decision in just minutes. We've received almost 30,000 proposals and approved over £200M through myNucleus so far - that's all thanks to our clever auto-underwriting system working its magic behind the scenes.
Find out more
Global Team
Amount lent
Since 2011
We want to share a few ways in which we've helped many amazing businesses over the years, because who doesn't love a great success story? Whether it's a boost to cash-flow for organisations supporting NHS key workers through Covid-19 or funding huge expansion plans for growing businesses, we're here to help the UKs SME landscape thrive.
Business Optix needed a cash flow boost to help with their ambitious two-year growth plan. The business offers a cloud-b...
Industry: Technology - SaaS Business Tool
Amount: £50,000
Reason: Growth
MCJ Fabrications Ltd, is a leading supplier of Architectural Fabrication Services, designing and manufacturing bespoke i...
Industry: Construction - Interior Architecture
Amount: £350,000
Reason: Help With Cash Flow
Simple Foods 24 Ltd, is a 24-hour convenience store in Hammersmith, that needed financial assistance to support their ex...
Industry: Retail - Convenience Store
Amount: £130,000
Reason: Expansion
Founded in 1975 and based in Shoeburyness, Southend-on-Sea, South Essex Stockholders (SES) processes and resells industr...
Industry: Construction: Steel stockolders
Amount: £14.5m
Reason: Turnaround and growth
A fast-growing events company had enjoyed phenomenal success over the past 18 months, since inception, experiencing an i...
Industry: Hospitality - Events
Amount: £90,000
Reason: Smooth cash flow after rapid growth
Contractual debt presents a serious challenge to cash-strapped businesses but not an insurmountable one - at least not i...
Industry: Construction - Contractor
Amount: £290,000
Reason: Working capital and combatting long payment terms
IT recruitment and payroll services provider Go PayCare Ltd, struggled when trying to secure finance with their bank. Ch...
Industry: Recruitment: IT recruitment and payroll
Amount: £2m
Reason: Business improvements
GSE Group is a civil engineering and plant hire construction firm. Founder Darrell Healey was experiencing the typical c...
Industry: Construction - Civil Engineering and Plant Hire
Amount: £3m
Reason: Working capital to tackle long payment terms
A professional landlord, with a large rental property portfolio business became a Nucleus client when they decided to se...
Industry: Property - Professional Landlord
Amount: £241,000
Reason: Refurbishment and sale of property
Mechanical contracting firm Correct Contract Services (CCS) had a welcome problem. Years of fast growth led to cash flow...
Industry: Construction - Mechanical and Electrical
Amount: £300,000
Reason: Growth