New Irish fintech Global Health to lend €60m to doctors

Global Health Capital, a new Irish fintech lender aimed at doctors, is aiming to deploy more than €60 million worth of capital in the coming three years.

Graham Byrne and David Crimmins, who co-founded the firm, are seeking to lend up to €5 million in the next year.

The service – which will only lend to incorporated businesses, not consumers – is being funded initially through a debt line from Santiago Capital, the Irish alternative lender.

It aims to make it quicker for doctors to access capital, solving the problem of delays with payments from insurance companies or the gap between an invoice being issued and a payment actually being received.

Byrne, who set up the Irish operation of Bibby Financial Services and also served as managing director of investment house Cardinal Capital, said he saw substantial opportunities for Global Health to quickly expand beyond Ireland. It expects to enter the British market in the next year and is eyeing up continental Europe.

“We’ve a plan to deploy €5 million in Ireland in the first year, and then over a three-year period, more than €60 million across different jurisdictions,” he said. “We’ve already started the fundraising process for our next fund.”

Crimmins, a medtech veteran who previously served as chief executive of health technology platform WebDoctor (now MediHive), noted that the firm is filling a gap in the market for time-poor medical professionals.

“When we were doing the research in the early days, we spoke to a large number of medical professionals across all sorts of specialities,” he said.

“The one thing that came back time and time again is: what doctors don’t have is time. For them, it’s their most precious commodity, and having a solution that took that into account was paramount for anything that we were ultimately going to do.”

Global Health has worked with Irish fintechs NoFrixion and ID-Pal to build out AI-driven credit options – including MediFlow, a 90-day, pre-approved revolving funding line under which a doctor can avail of up to €75,000 to bridge the gap between invoicing and getting paid.

Doctors can also apply for credit via MediFlex, a flexible credit line that’s secured on a clinic’s credit card terminal receipts. It is intended to cover unexpected cashflow issues or short-term funding needs and is repaid automatically from future credit card receipts.