Hambro Perks invests in agricultral challenger Oxbury Bank

The UK-based digital agriculture bank, Oxbury Banking PLC, has closed its latest funding round, having raised $2mn in capital from several new investors that were led by Hambro Perks. 

Oxbury Bank began trading nine months ago and has seen steady and robust growth during that time. 

So far, the bank, which won ‘Best Lending Initiative’ in the 2021 Emerging Payment Awards as judged by global Fintech industry peers, has achieved over £100m in committed lending to farm businesses. 

Furthermore, it has attracted over £120mn in retail and business deposits in a fiercely competitive savings market.

The fintech-driven lender is also pioneering new product innovation with its unique Oxbury Farm Credit working capital proposition and Oxbury Forest Saver, the UK’s first direct carbon mitigation savings account.

Agricultural digital banking in the UK

According to reports, Oxbury Bank is the UK’s first dedicated agriculture bank to launch in over a century and the total equity raised by the bank so far is £40mn.

The fintech, which was launched in 2018, is on a mission to help Britain’s 250,000 farm businesses as they rise to the challenge of climate change and build a modern, sustainable industry – targeting over £1.5bn of lending to British farming by 2025.

Co-founders James Farrar and Nick Evans, both seasoned entrepreneurs in the finance and agriculture sectors, the business have attracted funding from a unique group of technology, sustainability, and agriculture investors including Wheatsheaf, Hutchinsons and Frontier Agriculture.  This additional funding from Hambro Perks will help support additional growth and expansion.

Market demand for agricultural banking products

Speaking about the bank’s successful funding drive, James Farrar, Oxbury CEO, explained, “We’re incredibly proud to reach over £100m in committed lending – it’s a really important milestone and ahead of our initial projections for the business. The bank’s performance since launch has really underlined the strong demand for our customer-focussed approach to lending among businesses in the crucial farming and food production sector in the UK.”

He continued, “We’re delighted to welcome new investment from Hambro Perks. Their investment will help support our continued growth, as well as enable additional investment in the development of our market-defining tech-driven products.”

Tom Bradley, Partner at Hambo Perks, concluded,  “We are investors who are always looking to enable innovation. Our team identified the opportunity to invest at the junction of fintech and agriculture and from our first meeting with the Oxbury team we were impressed both by the calibre and credentials of the team and their vision to bring innovation to the agricultural finance market. The team has executed strongly and we are delighted to partner with them to help support the next phase of growth.”