Online short-term commercial lender Ezbob has lent over £20 million in the 12 months since its formal launch in 2013.

Furthermore, it wrote over 200 new short-term unsecured commercial loans written last month.

Business owners can borrow up to £50,000 through Ezbob’s online service with decisions available within hours of application and cleared funds in a client’s account on the same day.

Sharone Perlstein, Ezbob’s director, said intermediaries are recognising that commercial loans of this size do not have to be time consuming with little or no guarantee of completing.

He said: “Ezbob represents a real sea change in commercial funding for SMEs looking for short term loans of a smaller size. Not only have we made the process simple by putting it all online, but it also means that even brokers, who have not considered offering commercial loans before because of their complexity, can now look at their client banks and offer business clients a really useful service which is fast, easy to access and meets the needs of today’s SMEs.

“Being backed by the government and having support from the EU, has been a massive bonus in helping us overcome the kind of concerns which tend to surround businesses like ours which challenge the status quo and offer something new.”