Sukna Capital has become the first non‑bank lender in Saudi Arabia to win Capital Market Authority clearance for an open‑ended, Sharia‑compliant direct‑lending vehicle. The Sukna Fund for Direct Financing (SFDF) promises institutional investors periodic liquidity while giving founders a way to raise asset‑backed capital without handing over equity, a structure the Saudi venture scene has not had until now.
Because the fund is evergreen, investors can subscribe or redeem at set windows instead of waiting out a decade‑long lock‑up, a feature Sukna argues will broaden the pool of regional private‑credit capital. For SMEs it means loans can be matched to cash‑flow cycles rather than equity rounds, a point chief executive Fares Bardeesi says is critical as the local market matures beyond early‑stage venture cheques.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 blueprint calls for SME lending to reach at least 15% of total bank credit, but by the third quarter of 2024 the share was stuck at 9.1%, or SAR 329.23 billion. Bardeesi commented that the gap “isn’t just a statistic, it’s a scaled‑back growth trajectory for thousands of companies,” positioning SFDF as a regulatory‑aligned fix.
Bardeesi argued that government‑backed and bank programmes still leave a funding blind spot for companies that have outgrown venture capital but lack fixed assets. “We complement those channels, not compete with them, by structuring credit around real‑time revenues instead of collateral,” he said, adding that loan tenors will typically run six to 24 months and be underwritten on Sukna’s proprietary risk‑analytics stack.
Investment‑committee member Waleed Alballaa noted that Middle‑East startups now resemble their global peers in sophistication but still face “capital structures that belong to another era.” He said SFDF is designed to “meet founders where they are — with the right capital at the right time and minus the red tape.”
Sukna’s technology automates origination, monitoring and investor reporting, making it easier for limited partners to price risk and for borrowers to integrate debt alongside revenue‑based or venture lines. That should raise competitive pressure on traditional banks, which still account for more than 90% of SME lending.
The timing also aligns with a global rotation into floating‑rate private credit as higher policy rates strain conventional venture funding, suggesting SFDF could set a template for other Sharia‑compliant lenders looking to capture yield while supporting Vision 2030 diversification goals.
Sukna demonstrated its strategy last month by wiring a US $20 million facility to UAE‑based fintech OCTA, allowing the SaaS platform to embed working‑capital loans directly into SME invoicing and payments workflows, a first live test of the fund’s thesis that credit should travel through the software businesses already use.
