The company, which partners with some of the largest brands in automotive including eBay Motors Group, Exchange and Mart, and appears on comparison sites such as Confused.com, oversaw £35.77m of loans made to customers in the three months to 31 March 2022 compared to £17.87m in the same period last year.

The company, which added 300 new dealers to its network in 2021, said the figures reflect the sale of 3949 vehicles in the quarter, compared to 2461 in the previous year.

Mark Needham, head of finance & insurance at Inchcape UK, said: “Since we started working with CarMoney at the end of 2021, we’ve been able to help more Inchcape customers who are looking for finance but don’t fit within our own lending panel.

“CarMoney’s great customer service and flexibility in working within our current processes have been a big success so far.”

Phill Jones, head of eBay Motors Group, added: “Applications for car finance have been buoyant over the first quarter of 2022 and CarMoney has done a fantastic job of helping those customers by delivering great customer service and getting them a great deal on the cars advertised on Motors.co.uk.”

CarMoney’s managing director, Alastair Grier, said: “We are steadily carving out a bigger and bigger share of a strong marketplace throughout the UK, having increased our headcount from 71 to 128 and added our presence to sites such as CompareTheMarket and GoCompare during this period. We expect to announce further partnership deals as the year progresses.

“We continue to disrupt the market across the UK by applying technology to take away the discomfort of buying a car through helping customers smoothly navigate their way through the process, all the way from choosing the right vehicle from a respected dealer, to putting the best finance package in place.

“Most recently, we have been pushing hard to help customers to finance electric cars and have partnered with ZoomEV, the electric vehicle sharing platform which brings together electric vehicles and sharing economies to combat climate change.

“As to changing customer behaviours, we have noticed more and more customers applying for finance before looking specifically at cars in their quest to clarify the monthly payments and how much they can afford to borrow. This may be an early manifestation of a developing cost of living awareness but it is still early days.”