About Yoti

UK-based Yoti offers a range of digital identity solutions that help people prove who they are safely and effectively. Yoti has developed proprietary technologies covering identity verification, age assurance, authentication and esignatures, including world class in-house facial age estimation, liveness and facial recognition AI.

Yoti completes millions of ages and identity checks every month, with partnerships around the world across the financial, banking, government, gaming, gambling, dating, employment, social media, adult, retail and vaping sectors. One of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies, revenues grew 6,074% in the four years ending March 2023 to reach £6,25m. Clients and partners include Meta, OnlyFans, Epic Games, Yubo, The Government of Jersey, Improvement Service in Scotland, Sterling Check, HireRight, First Advantage, Checkr, Muzz, Aylo, Regal Gaming, Connells, NSPCC and Lloyds Bank.

The challenge

Yoti’s directors were looking for further funding to support the continued growth of the company through to achieving profitability and beyond.

The solution

Yoti negotiated a total £20m funding package, comprising £7.5 million in convertible debt funding from existing shareholders and £12.5 million in debt funding from HSBC’s Growth Lending proposition, referencing the value of its IP.

HSBC’s Growth Lending proposition, launched in July 2022, is a £350m fund targeting high growth scaleups early in their growth journey, under which HSBC takes a security interest over a successful applicant’s IP.

As part of its credit underwriting process, HSBC UK works with specialist IP services firm Inngot. Applicants use its online valuation tool, Goldseam and Sollomon, to quickly and easily identify and then obtain an indicative valuation for their IP and other intangible assets.

HSBC wanted various due diligence checks, one of which was to use Inngot’s tools to value our IP to give them comfort.

Using these tools avoided a long, complex, and expensive bespoke valuation. The process was quick, easy, and cost effective compared to alternatives, it satisfied HSBC, and it got us our money.

Hugh Godsal - Chief Financial Officer, Yoti

The result

£12.5 million Debt funding secured with HSBC