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Originator Spotlight/Lenderwize

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A fast-growing trade finance platform, Lenderwize specialises in invoice financing in the digital economy. Currently its platform provides its services to the telecommunications industry, financing invoices for the voice telecom wholesale industry, the SMS industry, the data industry, and the direct carrier billing industry. Lawrence Gilioli, founder at Lenderwize, [...]

Digital lending emerges as an important sub-segment of private debt

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Amid increasing breadth within the private debt asset class, specialised investors can allocate capital to sub segments in a bid to improve diversification and overall returns. Digital lenders - non-bank lenders that rely on external investors to fund originations - are playing an increasing role in lending to consumers and [...]

Originator Spotlight/Tessin

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Founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 2014, Tessin AB offers construction and bridge loans to property companies and property developers. While the company started using traditional crowd-funding methods, it has steadily expanded its capital base to encompass institutions and family offices, while moving further down the capital stack of the [...]

Unpacking Luxembourg’s Amended Securitisation Law

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A web session with CrossLend, PwC and Allen & Overy With Luxembourg as one of the main jurisdictions for securitisations in Europe, recent amendments to the duchy’s securitisation law look set to provide additional flexibility and clarity for issuers and investors. That includes expanding the variety of financial instruments [...]

Securitisation 2.0 in Luxembourg

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CrossLend’s resident expert on securitisations, Head of Legal Antonine Sanchez, talks about the potential advantages of a securitisation structure for investors, the changes to Luxembourg’s securitisation law including the ability to better incorporate foreign instruments such as German Schuldschein, and the concept of securitisation as a service. Hi Antonine, can [...]

Due diligence on digital lenders

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While investing in the originations of digital lenders can be attractive to investors, a robust and detailed due diligence framework is essential before deploying funds. Because there are often differences between lenders, such as reporting and data, it is essential to have a standardised approach to due diligence, combining [...]

The growth of private debt in Europe has its origins in the Global Financial Crisis

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Brian Kane, Director of Capital Markets and Origination at CrossLend, spent the best part of seventeen years working at a ratings agency in Europe from 1997 to 2015. There he had a ringside seat to the emergence of a range of new funding instruments and asset classes in the [...]

Will embedded finance shake up the B2B sector?

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Consumers have eagerly taken to the introduction of embedded finance, including buy now pay later (BNPL). Experts believe the B2B space is now primed to follow this consumer trend. They predict that B2B companies will make extensive use of embedded finance products and services, small and medium businesses (SMEs) [...]

Originator Spotlight/ creditshelf

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Founded in 2014, creditshelf is a lending platform focused on the German Mittelstand, supporting the capital needs of businesses while allowing institutional investors to gain exposure to this segment. With many German banks becoming increasingly risk averse, demand for financing among SMEs, including working capital, is set for steady [...]

5 ways inflation will impact private debt

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The rise of inflation as an economic force has complicated the outlook for investors, many of whom have seen historic losses in fixed income portfolios in the first quarter of 2022. But in private credit markets investors may actually benefit from features of this asset class, including variable interest rates, [...]

Risk scoring: How investors can assess digital lenders

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Risk scoring is at the heart of many lending approaches. The regulations that govern digital lending are typically less stringent than those in the banking space. This makes it even more essential for potential investors to analyse how a credit platform is pricing and managing risk, believes Miguel de Abreu [...]

Real estate: Germany’s structural funding gap and demand for mezzanine lending

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Demand for mezzanine financing among German real estate developers has grown in recent years as banks have lowered their LTV thresholds, creating a gap that is being filled by the private debt market. CrossLend spoke with Hubertus von Fircks, Managing Director of PEMA Invest Advisory GmbH, an investment management firm, [...]

The role of private debt as a portfolio diversifier for institutional investors

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Amid the low yields on offer on traditional fixed-income assets, private debt is emerging as a strong alternative. For institutional investors, adding private debt exposures to their portfolios can help improve diversification due to the low correlation of private debt to equities and fixed income, as well as an [...]

Originator Spotlight/Mozzeno

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One of Belgium’s largest peer-to-peer lending platforms, mozzeno, saw solid growth in 2021, with origination volumes exceeding 30 million euros. That growth was in part enabled by signing on new institutional investors in 2019. The platform caters mainly to consumer financing, though it also added business lending in 2021. [...]

Building industry standards for lending platforms in Germany

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Alternative lenders are playing an increasingly important economic role in funding businesses, in Germany and across Europe. In 2021, the amount of lending to businesses through German marketplaces totaled 11.4 billion euros. At the same time, growing participation on the funding side by institutional investors has led to a [...]

Data and analytics can give private debt funds an edge in the race to deploy capital

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Investment funds specialised in investing in private debt can be an attractive route to gain exposure to this alternative asset class. Yet data on the volumes of undeployed capital - dry powder - in the private debt fund segment globally suggest strong competition for attractive deals. When it comes to [...]

Originator Spotlight/ Finora Capital (Lithuania)

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Based in Vilnius, Lithuania, Finora Capital is a fast growing digital lender focused on providing working capital loans to small and micro enterprises. With origination volumes of 9.5 million euros in 2021, the company recently signed a guarantee agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF) that should help it [...]

Originator Spotlight/ Fellow Finance

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In the landscape of alternative lenders in Europe, Fellow Finance is a notable success story. Founded in Helsinki, Finland in 2013, its focus is on consumer finance and SME lending (primarily invoice factoring), with operations in Finland, Denmark, Poland, and Germany, though its native Finland is its largest market. [...]

2021 Recap – Major Trends in Private Debt

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2021 was an eventful year for private debt in Europe. The enduring low-yield environment saw continued demand for private debt offerings, in part due to the illiquidity premium on offer. For some banks, the prospect of enhanced capital requirements will increase the popularity of originate-to-distribute and balance sheet light [...]

Originator Spotlight/ Nestr Smart Finance

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Dutch originator Nestr Smart Finance has distinguished itself by offering faster loan approval than mainstream banks. Nestr’s business is focused on high quality borrowers and assets. The company competes on reliability and speed of approval - but never rates. Robust underwriting processes are key to minimising credit risk and [...]

Transforming the complexity of Europe’s fragmented lending economy into the asset of strong diversification

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Europe is simultaneously diverse and unified. We witness the trade-offs of this dichotomy every day. The beauty of being locally unique comes at the expense of less standardisation. What is good in culture and food can be a pain when it comes to accounting, lending, and regulatory environments. It [...]

How growth success factors have changed over time for European lending platforms

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Over the past few years, we have engaged with more than 70 credit platforms. We have drawn many learnings from these onboarding processes. Since all of these platforms have gone through some form of due diligence process with us and since we maintain close relationships to their teams, we [...]

The challenges of investing in private debt – a US / Europe comparison

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From time to time, I receive newsletter emails with the headline “X invested Y million in Z”. Anyone who has played an active role in a process that led to such a headline knows how supercharged the word “to invest” is with painful processes - all nighters, all the [...]

Challenges that alternative lenders and marketplaces face when connecting with experienced capital markets investors

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First of all, I need to confess something: While CrossLend is a capital markets technology provider today, we started out as a P2P lending platform. We stopped our P2P operations a long time ago for a number of reasons, but the main reason was: complexity. While I cannot state [...]

The rising importance of private debt as an asset class

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There is an academic and slightly boring way of lecturing about private debt as an asset class. It goes somewhat like this: yields are low, new investable assets are needed, and here is a few charts about a trendline showing that the year to year growth rates are climbing [...]

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