German loan securitisation startup CrossLend raises €14 million

Berlin-founded B2B fintech startup CrossLend has raised €14 million in a funding round led by Earlybird Venture Capital and ABN AMRO’s Digital Impact Fund (DIF), with participation from solarisBank, Luxembourg Future Fund, and Lakestar.

CrossLend has a mission of making the European debt capital market more transparent and efficient by offering securitisation as a service. Simply speaking, the startup purchases loans and transforms each of them into a series of notes, which then can be bought and sold by investors. The company is now planning to establish a European Debt Exchange to facilitate the transparent trading of different forms of debt.

The investments by ABN AMRO and solarisBank are part of a strategic partnership the banks and CrossLend have entered into.

“In the past, most fintech-driven innovations targeted the interaction between customers and financial products,” said Oliver Schimek, CEO of CrossLend. “But we believe that in times of regulatory pressure, a smarter refinancing backend for the European banking industry is urgently required to enable the institutions to provide better services to their customers and at the same time leverage more of their resources. Our vision is to give people more control over the use of their creditworthiness.”