The specialist finance team at the investment company is funding borro’s loan book in order to enable the company to service its growing customer base.

Paul Aitken, CEO of borro, says, ‘We expect Octopus to be our primary lending facility provider, and assuming we hit our plans we would expect our partnership with them to scale up in the next couple of years.’

Aitken believes the new funding line is an expression of the confidence that the market has in the business.

‘First and foremost, this new relationship reinforces our ability and desire to fund new business in the short and medium term. We have already invested heavily in our capacity to attract and service new business thanks to our recent equity injection from Augmentum Capital,’ he says.

Borro offers loans of between £1,000 and £1 million, secured against personal assets of value, including jewellery, watches, fine art, antiques and luxury cars. These are valued by the company’s London-based valuations team.

Octopus investment manager Hugh Costello explains, ‘We were impressed by borro’s products, its business model and its management team. A key attraction of borro for us was the strong operational focus of the business: it has rigorous processes in place that have been intelligently devised and are diligently executed.’

Costello adds, ‘Online lending is becoming more sophisticated and borro is leading the pack in the growing market for small scale, asset-backed loans.’

Octopus offers products such as venture capital trusts, enterprise investment schemes, and inheritance tax investment solutions.