The stock of intangible assets owned by UK businesses has an estimated value of £497 billion. Each year, around £130 billion is invested in new knowledge-based assets, of which over 50% are thought to be protectable using intellectual property (IP) rights (source: Imperial College/UK IPO). However, structures enabling businesses to harness these investments are immature. Specifically, lenders traditionally attribute no collateral value to IP and intangibles. Banks may even view them as a liability, because they do not know what these assets are, how they support the company's activities, or which ones would have any realisable value if the business were to fail. Inngot has been working for some years to overcome the barriers to unlocking IP and intangible value. It has already worked with large and specialist lenders and international government agencies to facilitate unsecured lending by deploying and refining its award-winning digital platform to help businesses identify, value and communicate their intellectual assets, revealing almost $1bn of previously hidden value for SMEs. The company is now focused on addressing the problem of using IP as collateral for secured lending. Its work builds on a position of thought leadership developed through a string of influential publications for government and non-governmental agencies and industry bodies (including UK IPO, ACCA and OECD). Having successfully completed a research project in 2019-20 supported by Innovate UK, Inngot has now validated a number of its assumptions using artificial intelligence approaches with the University of South Wales. It has also established an initiative with a leading insurance broker to source the cover and additional data required to back its new assessment process. The company therefore has a clear route to market. This loan application is in support of the build of Inngot's new platform, which will enable the use of IP and supporting intangibles as collateral at scale, for the benefit of innovative SMEs, lenders and insurers.

"The stock of intangible assets owned by UK businesses has an estimated value of £497 billion. Each year, around £130 billion is invested in new knowledge-based assets, of which over 50% are thought to be protectable using intellectual property (IP) rights (_source: Imperial College/UK IPO_). If this investment were being made in tangible assets, it would strengthen company balance sheets and provide collateral value that could be leveraged for debt finance. However, lenders traditionally attribute no value to IP and intangibles, or view them as a liability, because they do not know what the assets are, or which ones may ultimately prove to have any realisable value. Inngot has been working for some years to overcome the barriers to unlocking IP and intangible value. It has worked with a number of large and specialist lenders and international government agencies to facilitate unsecured lending by deploying and refining its award-winning digital platform to help businesses identify, value and communicate their intellectual assets, revealing over £500m of previously hidden value for SMEs. Inngot has also developed a position of thought leadership: since the 2013 _Banking on IP?_ report delivered for the UK IPO, CEO Martin Brassell has been responsible for a string of influential publications, including two studies on accounting practices for ACCA, co-authorship of the OUP book _Economic Approaches to Intellectual Property_, an authoritative investigation of UK IP valuation practice (_Hidden Value_, 2017) and an investigation of international IP finance policy initiatives for OECD (publication pending). Inngot is now focused on addressing the problem of using IP as collateral for lending. The importance of this development has been underlined by a 2017 Autumn Budget statement that ""the government will also work with businesses, lenders, insurers, the British Business Bank and the Intellectual Property Office to overcome the barriers to high growth, intellectual property-rich firms, such as those in the creative and digital sector, using their intellectual property to access growth funding"". Insurance is an important element in underpinning collateral value, but this needs scale in order to be viable. As OECD research has identified, there are two key challenges in determining which assets could have recoverable value: high assessment costs, and valuation uncertainties. This InnovateUK application addresses significant, clearly identified gaps in the current provision of IP information services which need to be 'plugged' in order to make selected IP a viable class of collateral."