Simply Asset Finance, the specialist SME lender founded in 2017, has reported pre-tax profits of £3.4 million for the financial year ending 31 December 2025, alongside revenues of £66 million, up 9% year on year. The gross loan book expanded to £532 million, while cumulative origination since inception rose 25% to £2.05 billion.
The results come after a period of deliberate investment rather than margin optimisation. Origination for the year alone grew 31% to more than £400 million, and the active customer base now exceeds 13,000 with total agreements surpassing 23,000, a 23% increase on the prior year.
The Kara build-out
The most operationally significant development of the year was the deployment of Kara, Simply’s proprietary AI agent. The company says Kara now supports 30 to 40% year-on-year growth in payment processing volumes, customer communications and proposal handling. More concretely, the system underpins a new payout capability that allows vendor partners with an approved credit line to draw down funds in as little as eight minutes, a materially faster cycle than conventional asset finance approval workflows.
Simply has embedded Kara firm-wide rather than limiting it to a specific workflow, which the company frames as a productivity multiplier across the whole organisation. The eight-minute payout claim is positioned by the company as market-leading, though no independent benchmark was cited in the announcement.
The technology development has already produced at least one distributional outcome. Simply disclosed a new partnership with Lombard, the asset finance arm of NatWest Group, under which it will support Lombard’s reach into the scale-up segment. NatWest’s Lombard is one of the largest asset finance providers in the UK by volume, so the arrangement is a meaningful distribution signal for a lender of Simply’s size, even if commercial terms were not disclosed.
Market context
Simply operates in a segment where challenger asset finance lenders have been steadily taking share from high street banks, particularly among SMEs that fall outside standard credit scoring models. The company’s stated differentiation is a technology-enabled underwriting approach that looks beyond balance sheet metrics, which aligns with a broader trend of cash-flow and asset-based lending gaining regulatory and investor acceptance as an alternative to collateral-heavy bank lending.
The 45% increase in front-office headcount, taking the workforce to 196, signals that Simply is not treating AI deployment as a substitute for relationship-based distribution. Asset finance, particularly in sectors such as transport, construction and agriculture, still closes largely through direct origination and broker relationships, and the expanded team supports that model.
Regional expansion continued with a new Glasgow office. Since 2022, Simply says it has deployed more than £150 million to Scottish SMEs, and its Liverpool office passed £50 million in cumulative origination to date.
Chief financial officer Stefan Wolvaardt said the results reflect a business that “has grown strongly and sustainably,” adding that with origination now above £400 million the company is entering its next phase of growth. The ambition for 2026, per the announcement, is to sustain that origination trajectory through new strategic partnerships and a broader lending ecosystem.
The immediate milestones to watch are the commercial terms of the Lombard partnership, whether Kara’s payout capability is extended beyond approved vendor partners to a wider borrower base, and how the cost base evolves given the significant headcount investment made in 2025.
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