Inngot CEO presents at High-Growth Tech Community Conference 2022

Inngot CEO Martin Brassell was invited to speak about the importance of IP-based finance for scaleup tech firms at the High-growth Technology Business Community Conference 2022, which took place earlier this week.

Following his presentation, he moderated a panel discussion involving Neil Bellamy, Head of Technology, Media, Telecoms (TMT) & Services at NatWest Group and Allison Mages, Head, IP Commercialization Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Martin Brassell said that historically, IP-based finance has been a very specialist field; however, it is now being taken far more seriously by banks, governments and NGOs globally, and is scaling up rapidly.

He explained that there is more than one ‘flavour’ of IP-based finance, listing five major product areas, which suit different types of IP and intangible assets.

While the two most obvious challenges in scaling IP-based finance have been high transaction costs and a lack of lender confidence in recoverable value, more mainstream commercial lenders are becoming actively interested in IP as an asset class, and innovation is democratising this form of funding

Neil Bellamy said that he is an ‘evangelist’ for IP-based lending and wants to ‘normalise’ IP-lending for IP-rich firms. He added that if banks can’t lend against IP, they won’t have much of a business left because clients are now focusing on IP as assets, and many high-growth firms don't have significant tangible assets. That means lenders will have to start using IP as collateral for business loans.

In fact, he argued, COVID has shown that companies can have tangible assets that don’t produce income – indeed, many tangible assets turned out to be liabilities, as they couldn’t contribute to company turnover. He observed that lenders must look at businesses that have good intangible assets, and IP in particular.

Neil also explained that research data shows that good IP drives business success and reduces the likelihood that loans will be defaulted on. He concluded that IP-based lending will lower the borrowing cost of borrowing for IP-rich companies that deserve it because they are lower risk.

He stated: "We want to get involved in IP lending as it is the future of our business... What I'm really interested in for NatWest is changing culture and changing how we approach lending with IP as collateral. We can lend against intellectual property using intangibles as collateral."

What would really drive growth in IP-based finance, he believes, would be for government and regulators to meet banks halfway on regulatory relief. The current system effectively incentivises lending against tangible assets compared to lending against intangible assets.

Allison Mages explained that WIPO believes that the time is right to use IP value as collateral for lending, which is why the UN agency has launched an action plan to support the shift to IP-supported finance. She said: "It isn't easy for businesses to access the capital they need for growth."

WIPO, the UN agency for intellectual property, launched its action plan to mainstream IP-based finance, with a major event at its Geneva headquarters on November 1st, 2022. The High-level conversation on unlocking intangible asset finance event (click for video) was attended by around 700 delegates in person and virtually, and Martin Brassell was invited to Geneva to speak about IP-based finance during the day's programme.

The High-growth technology business community conference 2022 took place on November 21st and 22nd, 2022, and was organised by the European Patent Office (EPO), the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) and the European Commission (EC). Inngot is a supporter of the HTB Community.