Non-bank lender Nighthawk Partners has become an approved financier for UK Export Finance’s (UKEF) facility aimed at small and medium-sized exporters.
Nighthawk becomes the second non-bank lender on the roster of UKEF’s General Export Facility (GEF) alongside White Oak UK, which joined in November last year.
Newable stopped providing new loans under the scheme in June 2025, leaving GEF without any non-bank lenders, and UKEF said at the time it was actively seeking replacements.
Attracting non-bank lenders to the GEF is part of UKEF’s strategy to meet its target of supporting 1,000 SMEs per year by the end of the decade, as the segment continues to struggle to secure financing from banks.
Founded in 2018, London-headquartered Nighthawk is focused on SMEs in the technology, manufacturing and defence sectors.
James Davis, managing partner at Nighthawk, told GTR the business focuses on early-stage innovation lending and domestic scale-up financing as well as export finance.
The rates Nighthawk expects to charge borrowers under the GEF will be “very commercial, supportive and allow growth”, he said.
The company’s primary offering for UK businesses is innovation lending at the start-up phase for firms trying to accelerate their research and development.
“At the moment, for UK SMEs, there is no real solution from UK banks or other lenders, and it is a gap that we are filling to support the innovation and scale-up of UK corporates,” Davis said.
Nighthawk’s second strand of lending, growth credit or venture debt, is for more established businesses as they look to commercialise their products.
The firm’s focus on debt over equity seeks to capitalise on “the speed of turnaround and decision-making” specialist non-bank lenders can offer, Davis said. “A definitive answer early on is important for businesses, so they can focus on their operations.”
“There might be a lot of GEF facilities there for the multinational, large corporates with predictable earnings,” he said. “But in the SME world, in technology, the best and largest companies in the world were and will continue to be loss-making for approximately the first 20 years. We want to support those businesses in their global expansion.”
“Our real aim is to help these businesses expand to the level that means they can get multiple lines of credit from multinational banks in all jurisdictions,” he said.
Launched in 2019, the GEF was designed to expand UKEF’s coverage to meet exporters’ general working capital needs, instead of tying the agency’s support to specific export contracts.
The scheme provides partial guarantees to lenders to enable UK exporters to access trade finance and can support facilities of up to £25mn.
Lenders can secure a UKEF guarantee of up to 80% on short-term financing to businesses that have made at least 20% of their turnover from exports in the last three years, or have made 5% of their annual turnover from UK exports in each of the last three years.
The banks currently participating in the GEF are Bank ABC, ABN AMRO, Barclays, Danske Bank, DNB, HSBC, ICICI Bank, KBC Bank, Lloyds, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Ulster Bank and Virgin Money.
