Spanish P2P Lender Strikes Deal with Confederation of SMEs

The Spanish SME lending platform MytripleA has struck a partnership with the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CEPYME).

MytripleA is the only Spanish peer-to-peer lender to have acquired a license from the Bank of Spain. The platform extends both unsecured and insured loans to local SMEs. MytripleA is part of the ever-burgeoning GLI Finance family. GLIF invested €445,500 in the Spanish lender in April, in exchange for a 9.9% stakein the company.

MytripleA’s collaboration with CEPYME will see the former’s services endorsed and promoted to around 2 million SME members. This is the first P2P partnership that CEPYME has inked to date.

Antonio Garamendi, President of CEPYME, gave his take:

"Opening new funding solutions for our members is critical to supporting their growth. Crowdfunding has been successful in countries such as the US or UK and we hope that we will see the same impact in Spain. We are convinced that not all projects for expansion and business growth should have to rely exclusively on bank financing and therefore are confident that this agreement will be beneficial to the country’s SME community."

It’s wrong, of course, to assume that MytripleA will be solely responsible for opening up access to alternative SME credit in Spain. LoanBook is also coming on strong, having lent just shy of €4m to date, according to the Liberum AltFi Volume Index Europe. Another Spanish SME lender by the name of Comunitae is on the brink of breaching the €20m mark in cumulative lending.

Upon investing in the equity of MytripleA, Geoff Miller’s outfit also committed to sourcing funding for €10m of MytripleA loans. The supply of that funding will likely be drawn from the GLI Alternative Finance fund, which will stage an IPO at some point over the next few months.

With the CEPYME arrangement driving supply, and GLIF providing the capital, MytripleA may soon begin to ramp up SME lending volumes.

Sergio Anton, Founder of the platform, commented:

"Technology has enabled the disintermediation of financial markets and MytripleA was born with the aim to democratise the financial industry in Spain by giving investors the option of lending money directly from their computer, and giving any SME the option of applying for funding without knocking on the door of a bank. We are proud to offer our services to CEPYME members as it opens up a new source of much needed funding for high growth SMEs in a country that has for far too long been dependent on traditional banks.”