The deal
London-based fintech kennek has secured a $12.5m seed funding round led by HV Capital. Other backers include Dutch Founders Fund, AlbionVC, FFVC, and Plug & Play Ventures and Syndicate One.
kennek aims to revolutionise the rapidly growing $2.3trn private debt market with its operating system for lenders.
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Specifically, it says that it can eliminate the complexity and inefficiency that has held back the huge non-bank lending sector.
kennek is riding the growing wave of alternative lending, with banks’ lending activities under increasing pressure.
The raise will allow kennek to double-down on impressive traction it has in the UK. In addition, it will enlarge its tech team and accelerate its product roadmap.
Why it matters
Until now, lenders have had to rely on Excel and a jumble of unconnected tools and data. This is costly and time-consuming. In particular, it fails to leverage high-potential recent innovations like open banking, open finance and payments. kennek has turned this situation on its head with its vertical SaaS offering. The platform covers every aspect of lenders operations, from loan underwriting all the way through to monitoring & servicing, as well as investor reporting, leveraging the latest in the API technology to create a ‘single point of truth’ for lenders, borrowers and investors.
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By GlobalDatakennek also plans to expand its geographic reach into continental Europe, following the recent signing of its first client there.
“Lenders are really just at the start of the digitalisation journey. kennek is here to help accelerate that journey and provide them with the tools to capitalise on the growth of the non-bank lending space.”, said Xavier De Pauw, Founder of kennek. “Until kennek, lenders had to devote countless hours to menial operational tasks and deal with jumbled and hard-coded data. This makes every other part of lending a headache. As former lenders ourselves, we lived and breathed these frustrations, and built kennek to make them a thing of the past.”
‘This is just the beginning’
Thibault Lancksweert, founder of kennek, added: “One of the unique things about the kennek platform is that it can cater for all different types of B2B loans: bridge & development loans, SME term loans, R&D and grant advances… to name just a few. And we’re seeing strong demand across the board. We’ve received some fantastic client feedback to date. My personal favourite was a lender saying that ‘the kennek platform is life changing’. We are excited to use this fundraise to further develop our offering, broaden our reach and get feedback like that from hundreds more lenders. This is just the beginning.”
The funding round was oversubscribed and closed within 10 weeks of opening, quick even for the in-vogue alternative credit space. Existing investors followed on, with previous lead investor DFF doubling its investment in this latest raise.
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