Allica applies for Swedish licence months after $1.2bn valuation
The UK business lender has filed with Sweden's regulator, hired four executives and set up a local entity. Its £4bn UK loan book now shares management attention with a second country.
Allica Bank has applied to Finansinspektionen, the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, for a banking licence. It is the first time the digital business bank has sought to operate outside the UK.
The bank said on Monday that it has already registered a legal entity in Sweden as part of the application.
It has also appointed a management team there. Rickard Westlund will run the operation, with Javier Ubillos as chief technology officer, Victor Ramstrom as chief product and operating officer and Samuel Tawadros as chief financial officer.
Recruitment for further product, technology and operational roles is under way.
The application follows a $155 million Series D round in February that valued Allica at close to $1.2 billion. The bank said at the time that the money would fund its next stage of growth, including a first expansion outside the UK.
Allica gives four reasons for choosing Sweden: a large established business lending market, market share concentrated among incumbent banks, a highly digital economy and a regulator it rates. It says Swedish firms face many of the same problems as their UK counterparts.
If the licence is granted, Allica says Sweden would serve as a base for offering services in other European Union markets over the longer term.
At home, Allica has held a UK banking licence since 2019 and lends to established businesses with between five and 250 employees. It says that segment generates a third of UK GDP and has been underserved by high street banks and digital challengers alike.
The bank reports lending of more than £4 billion to UK businesses, and says more than 15,000 of them use its current account.
In March it was named the UK's most recommended business bank, on feedback from more than 4,000 UK businesses. Last October it bought the SME lending fintech Kriya, its third acquisition, moving further into working capital finance.
Lucy Rigby, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said: "It's brilliant to see Allica building on their success here in the UK and expanding into other European markets."
For a UK founder looking for growth or working capital finance, nothing changes yet. The application is subject to review by Finansinspektionen, and Allica says it will set out further detail on its Swedish plans only if authorisation is granted.
What changes after that is where the next tranche of capital and engineering time goes. A lender that spent seven years building one book in one market will be building two, and the February round was raised on the promise of exactly that.
Allica has not said how much of the $155 million is earmarked for Sweden, nor what it expects to lend there. Those are the numbers worth asking for when authorisation lands.