How iwoca is aiming to reshape business finance in the UK

When Christoph Rieche left Goldman Sachs in 2010, he was not chasing a specific idea. He was chasing a problem. “I wanted to take my fate in my own hands,” he says. “I just wanted to do something different.”

What he found was a gap at the heart of the UK economy: access to finance. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many businesses were struggling not just to grow, but to survive. Credit lines were being cut, and traditional banks were retreating.

“Businesses were not able to access financing their existing credit lines were cut,” he explains. That challenge became the foundation for iwoca, the fintech he co-founded in 2011.

More than a decade later, the company has provided funding to over 100,000 businesses and now lends more than £1bn annually. But Rieche’s ambition extends far beyond scale.

“Our mission is to finance one million small businesses,” he says, a goal that reflects both the size of the opportunity and the need for systems that can operate at scale.

The problem iwoca set out to solve has evolved, but not disappeared. The lending landscape has shifted dramatically, with challenger lenders now accounting for more than 60 per cent of SME lending, compared with around 20–30 per cent when iwoca launched. Yet the overall level of lending has stagnated.

“If you look at the last decade, the stock of loans is the same as it was in 2015,” Rieche notes.

In real terms, that represents a decline and a missed opportunity. According to iwoca’s own analysis, access to funding can drive a “19 per cent in revenue growth over a year” for individual businesses, with £1.3bn of lending generating £2.8bn in economic value.

The implication is clear: capital is not just a financial tool, but a growth lever.

Rieche’s approach to solving this problem has been rooted in data and focus. The company began by targeting e-commerce sellers, a fast-growing but underserved segment, using real-time data to assess creditworthiness in ways traditional lenders could not.

“It was really a green field,” he says of the early days of fintech.

But building at scale required more than a strong starting point. It demanded constant reinvention. Rieche describes his role as evolving alongside the business, moving from hands-on execution to building new capabilities.

“It’s a bit like Lego. My role is to create Legos and give them to other people to build better castles,” he says.

This shift highlights a broader challenge in scaling organisations: the need for leaders to continuously redefine their contribution.

The same principle applies to the business itself. iwoca has expanded beyond lending into new areas, from credit scoring tools to insurance and payments, guided by a simple philosophy.

“We are problem solvers,” Rieche says. Rather than building a single product, the company identifies adjacent problems faced by its customers and develops targeted solutions.

Each initiative is treated as an independent “squad”, with its own team and resources, an approach designed to maintain speed and focus as the organisation grows.

Culture has also been critical. Rieche emphasises the importance of hiring for mindset as much as skill.

“We like people who are self-motivated, curious and have humility,” he says.

That humility is particularly important in a business built on risk and decision-making. Overconfidence, he suggests, can quickly lead to poor outcomes.

Looking back, Rieche’s advice is not about shortcuts or rapid exits. Instead, it is about endurance.

“People generally leave companies too early,” he says. “There’s a huge amount of value that you create once a company is a little bit bigger.”

In other words, the real rewards of building a business often come later, for those willing to stay the course.