Digital lender Kabbage, which offers small businesses lines of credit up to $250,000, has secured a four-year revolving credit facility to fuel further growth. The funding, provided by an undisclosed “leading life insurance company,” is the longest period of committed debt capital for the 10-year-old company and a major boost for its business model as the ecosystem gets increasingly competitive, with the likes of OnDeck Capital, Fundbox and BlueVine vying for market share.

Deepesh Jain, head of capital markets at Kabbage, told Bank Innovation the capital will be used to fund loans. “It’s basically enabling us to provide more access to more capital to small businesses,” he said. “The idea is to put this money to work to provide access to capital across the U.S. to most small businesses, which otherwise are not being served by traditional financial services companies.”

So far, Kabbage has lent $7 billion in capital to 185,000 businesses through Celtic Bank, a Utah-chartered industrial bank. The company differentiates itself from incumbents and startups though its AI-powered digital loan assessment process, which can take minutes. The company also has been white-labeling its technology to institutions, including ING, Mastercard and Santander, for more than five years.

David O’Connell, senior analyst at Aite Group’s wholesale banking group, said the timing for the debt commitment could coincide with changes in the credit market. In the event of an economic downturn, small business lenders could face pressure, he noted.

“The lending cycle is going to peak sometime in next 24 months, so this is an extremely interesting time frame in which to be funding this,” O’Connell said. “These are tricky times to be in the credit market.”

In response to concerns about how its business model would weather an economic downturn, Jain said Kabbage’s underwriting model and its continuous assessment of customers’ financial situations helps it detect challenges as they arise. What sets Kabbage apart, he added, is its ability to pull in a range of data points continuously.

“We utilize a variety of different data sources, and we ask our customers to give us permission to access their online presence, including banking data, accounting information or their social media presence and other data points,”  Jain said. “We have more than 2 million live connections with our customers on an ongoing basis, which allows us to monitor the [financial] health of our customers.”

Atlanta-based Kabbage has raised $500 million in equity funding to date. Its investors include the SoftBank Vision Fund, BlueRun Ventures and Mohr David Ventures.