German fintech Compeon scoops €12m fundraise

A fintech marketplace for business financing solutions has secured a series B fundraise.

A credit brokerage platform by the name of Compeon has raised €12m in a series B fundraising round. The round was led by existing investor Tengelmann Ventures, with btov Partners and Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures also participating.

The money will be used to fund the expansion of Compeon’s technology platform and to invest in growth.

Compeon is not a marketplace lending platform, but an independent, technology-based brokerage platform. The exact difference is, admittedly, difficult to discern. Compeon works with more than 220 banks and alternative finance firms to facilitate a range of financing solutions for business borrowers. These include: loans and leasing, factoring, mezzanine capital, finetrading and project financing.

The company’s technology allows customers to quickly and transparently find funding solutions, with good oversight on interest rates, equity ratios and collateral.

Compeon processed a total of €2.5bn in loan requests in 2016, with an average loan request of €700,000. The company says that, for certain product types, up to 50 per cent of applications find luck with Compeon’s partners, and are funded successfully. The platform has facilitated over €100m since launching in 2013.

“Compeon is a leader in the shift to digitalisation of SME financing,” said Christian Winter, CEO of Tengelmann Ventures. “The Compeon team have demonstrated that the complex requirements of commercial financing can be successfully moved to a digital platform. We are looking forward to the future growth of the businesss.”

The Compeon platform is similar in structure to Smava, Germany’s leading fintech brokerage platform for consumer credit solutions. Smava secured a $34m series C financing round in October of last year.

Similar business models have also been deployed in the UK by the likes of Funding Options and Funding Xchange, and indeed are instrumental to the government’s mandatory bank referral scheme, which has so far underwhelmed.