33 served SME market as key to the business ’ rapid growth – at the end of 2017 , OakNorth had lent £ 852mn , and by the end of 2018 this had grown to £ 2.2bn .
“ Within that £ 2.2bn , we ’ ve had £ 500mn in repayments ,” Nooriala comments . “ So about 15 % of our loans have already been repaid and we ’ ve never had a default ,” he adds , illustrating that when served correctly , SMEs can be reliable and lucrative . “ As much as it sounds phenomenal that we ’ ve gone from zero to profitable , to a multi-billion-dollar loan book , we actually think that ’ s small compared to what we ’ re going to achieve in the next two years .” Nooriala ’ s faith in the organisation is shared by outside investors , too , with OakNorth having recently received $ 440mn in investment from a funding round led by Japanese tech giant SoftBank ’ s $ 100bn Vision Fund . The company ’ s valuation had already surpassed $ 1bn in 2017 , and then reached $ 2.8bn .
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