Barclays invests in brand new working capital technology for corporate clients

• Barclays is looking to drive the growth of next-generation business through a £3m investment into Trade Ledger and the implementation of its working capital platform
• The bank has signed a three-year technology deal which will deliver fast, easy access to working capital for corporate clients

Barclays has today announced that it is further developing its working capital offering by investing in and implementing Trade Ledger’s next-generation working capital orchestration platform. This new platform will provide industry leading end-to-end credit management automation for Barclays Corporate clients in the UK and around the world.

Working capital finance solutions like Invoice Discounting, Asset Based Lending and Selected Debtor Finance are key credit solutions for businesses, and lenders, during periods of growth and downturn. However, there has been very little innovation in the working capital finance industry in the last few decades, which has slowed access to this type of finance.

Through implementing the Trade Ledger platform, Barclays will allow clients to unlock cash flow with convenient, quick access to working capital. By using API-driven SaaS technology, Barclays will offer a client-centric onboarding and loan management user experience, eliminating time-consuming and labour-intensive manual processes with access to real-time data - including a client’s accounting platform.

James Binns, Global Head of Trade and Working Capital at Barclays, said: “Businesses need access to reliable, flexible finance now more than ever. Investing in and implementing the Trade Ledger Platform will allow us to make lending decisions faster and more efficiently, using real-time data drawn from a rich variety of sources, and powerful workflows. This drives faster time-to-money, reducing the cost of funding in supply chains, which has huge benefits for our corporate banking clients and the communities they support.”

Martin McCann, CEO and co-founder of Trade Ledger, said: “Our common mission to create a world where every business gets the capital it needs to thrive, is key to our strong working partnership with Barclays. We are delighted that Barclays Bank has chosen Trade Ledger to support its offering to business borrowers, and that it has the confidence in our business vision to make this investment. Our history with Barclays goes back to 2018 when we won the Barclays Open Innovation Challenge and, from then on, we have worked with the bank’s leadership team to identify areas of the bank where our technology could be applied to deliver transformational value to the bank’s lending processes.”