U.K. Alt-Lender DueCourse Falls Into Administration

Less than a year after raising venture capital, U.K.-based alternative finance company DueCourse has reportedly gone into administration.

Recent reports said DueCourse, which operates as an invoice financing platform, began working with administrators Leonard Curtis  this month. But cofounder Paul Haydock told reporters that the company is simply undergoing some changes.

“We have decided to close one of the companies in the group as part of a planned restructure,” he told UKTN. “Customers haven’t been affected.”

Earlier this year DueCourse was shortlisted by the Tech City U.K. Upscale program, one of 33 startups chosen.

In September of last year, the company raised about $8 million in seed funding from GFC and other backers. The debt financing, reports said at the time, reflected the company’s business model as a direct lender of invoice financing, instead of a third-party intermediary.

DueCourse also developed its own risk mitigation technology to use data found within SMEs’ cloud-based accounting platforms to underwrite loans.

“The rise of cloud accounting within the SME market over the past few years has enabled us to access real-time accounting information, which we combine with other external sources of data to generate a proprietary risk score for lending to small businesses,” explained Haydock to reporters at the time. Its risk model decides whether an SME is eligible to receive invoice financing, as well as the cost of that loan.

In announcing the seed funding, DueCourse also revealed expectations to raise up to $19.5 million in Series A funding over the coming months, which never materialized.