Samir Desai, co-founder and CEO of Funding Circle, the world’s largest marketplace for small business loans, made a big announcement today at LendIt Europe 2015. They will be acquiring Zencap, an SME lender based on Germany. Zencap has only been around for just over a year, but they have been very successful thus far.
Earlier this year at LendIt USA 2015, Zencap claimed to be the fastest growing small business marketplace lender in Europe. Over the last 17 months, they have lent more than €35 million to 520 businesses. Although Zencap’s growth is impressive, the most important part of this news is that Funding Circle will go from offering loans in just two countries (UK and the US) to offering loans in 3 more: Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. This will solidify Funding Circle’s spot as the leading global brand in the small business lending space.
Samir Desai, CEO and co-founder of Funding Circle stated:
Our vision is to help millions of businesses across the world sidestep the outdated and inefficient banking system and borrow from investors. Today’s news is the next exciting stage of this journey. We have been hugely impressed with what the Zencap team have achieved so far. By coming together we combine Funding Circle’s leading position in the UK and US with Zencap’s deep understanding of local markets to create the first truly global marketplace lending platform.
We also reached out to Matthias Knecht, co-founder of Zencap who had this to say:
We share a common vision with Funding Circle: to build a better financial world. By bringing both companies together we are creating the No. 1 online lending marketplace for business loans and the first truly global player in our industry. We will be able to roll out new products even faster, shorten turnaround time for borrowers, and leverage our global institutional investors.
The LendIt team caught up with Samir after he made the announcement at LendIt Europe.
Samir Desai’s keynote from LendIt Europe 2015 is also available on the LendIt website.
