NatWest Group has taken a minority stake in London-based financial AI startup, Bourn, as part of a £3.5 million funding round, as the high street bank looks to boost innovation in how it serves business customers.
Bourn, which launched last year to help small and medium-sized enterprises tackle persistent cashflow pressures, secured the investment from NatWest alongside Portfolio Ventures, McPike Global Family Office, Haatch, Love Ventures and Aperture. The funding will be used to accelerate the rollout of Bourn’s flagship product, the Flexible Trade Account (FTA), which provides SMEs with real-time access to flexible secured funding by embedding overdraft-style flexibility directly into the bank accounts and financial platforms businesses already use.
At the heart of Bourn’s approach is an AI-driven risk engine that powers the FTA, enabling businesses to pay suppliers faster, manage cashflow intelligently and fund growth without taking on additional debt. The solution integrates payments, current account functionality and instant access to secured working capital.
Nick Tracey, co-founder and CEO of Bourn, said:
“2025 has been a year of validation, proving that SMEs and their funding partners need a more modern, data-driven approach to working capital. This investment round is a huge vote of confidence. It shows that established banks see the same opportunity we do: to bring liquidity closer to the point of need and help businesses fund growth more dynamically.”
Tracey explained that Bourn’s goal is to reinvent the business overdraft for SMEs, adding that when working capital flows easily, businesses invest, hire and grow, and that’s how finance can work for the real economy again.
For NatWest, led by chief executive Paul Thwaite, the deal is intended to pave the way for collaboration between the bank and Bourn to support mid-market and wider business customers. NatWest plans to use insights from the FTA to explore how embedded working capital tools can bolster cashflow access for entrepreneurs and established firms.
Ladi Greenstreet, head of strategic investments at NatWest Group, added:
“Now more than ever, SMEs need the right support to scale and grow – which is why Bourn’s offering has so much potential. Their founding team combines deep banking expertise with genuine fintech innovation, while their capabilities complement our ambition to help customers access working capital seamlessly through the platforms they already use. Supporting Bourn reinforces our commitment to helping fintechs thrive while ensuring our Commercial Mid-Market customers can access the funding and support they need.”
Bourn has been piloting the solution with Investec for several months, working with live customers to validate the solution as an alternative to traditional offerings. According to Bourn, the initial results have been overwhelmingly positive, with the bank seeing the solution as a potential “game-changer” for the industry.
Beyond NatWest and Investec, Bourn is integrating its technology with a growing network of financial institutions, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, accounting platforms and B2B marketplaces. This embedded model allows its working-capital solution to reach businesses within their existing financial workflows, helping finance providers deliver on-demand funding with minimal operational complexity.
By positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for embedded SME finance, Bourn enables partners to deploy flexible, receivable-backed funding at scale, reducing distribution costs whilst accelerating SME access to productive capital.
The capital will be used to deepen Bourn’s account functionality, grow its team and scale through new financial services and platform partnerships that bring working capital directly into the systems businesses already use.
