London-headquartered fintech firm Demica is planning a significant expansion of its presence in North America after receiving a fresh injection of funding.

The company, which connects corporate multinationals with working capital solutions offered by banks, also plans to add invoice discounting and distribution finance products to its platform.

Matt Wreford, Demica’s CEO (pictured), tells GTR the two primary areas of focus will be to expand the company’s North American sales and commercial team, and to boost its supplier on-boarding operations in the region.

“25% of the funded programmes we have on the platform already are from North America, but we’ve covered those clients from Europe,” he says.

“This is the opportunity to get more boots on the ground and cover clients locally.”

Demica initially established a formal presence in the region in September 2018 with the appointment of Andrew Holmes, a former head of Americas trade finance at Barclays, who is based in New York.

Demica chief commercial officer Maurice Benisty explains that decision was taken partly in response to strong growth in the US’ supply chain finance market, which he estimates at around 20% a year.

“There’s a lot of underlying industry growth taking place domestically, and increased appetite from funders looking to participate in that growth,” he tells GTR.

“The receivables finance market is starting to see some injection of new capital, new players into the market, and that’s causing some transfer of activity from the well-established asset-based lending (ABL) market – not at a rate that will change the ABL market, but because the ABL market is so large even a small transfer away makes for a big opportunity in receivables finance.”

The announcement follows the successful closure of a US$30mn series C funding round led by Simcah Management.

The funding period will last two years, during which time Wreford expects the number of employees across Demica’s global business to grow from 180 today to around 240.