Empowering lenders to boost digital mortgage offerings, Oper Credits lands €11 million

Belgian-Swiss digitised mortgage SaaS firm Oper Credits has raised €11 million in Series A funding to disrupt the European mortgage market. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and ABN Amro Ventures with existing shareholders, including Techstars, Pitchdrive and Verve Ventures also participating.

Betting big on the untapped €1.2-trillion market of property buying, the platform offers a turnkey, white-label SaaS solution for banks and financial institutions in the mortgage lending space. Founded in 2018 by Geert Van Kerckhoven, Nick Van Berckelaer and Wouter Lachat, the platform uses compliant ‘smart data’ which means customers are not only ready for the European regulatory framework but able to remain on top of and ahead of any industry changes.

According to the startup, this presents banks with the opportunity to sidestep the complexity of building a digital mortgage solution from the ground up or having to rely on custom-built solutions that can be difficult and expensive to maintain. 

This is an interesting time for mortgages across Europe with the cost-of-living crisis, and bank branch closures. This is also reflected in the growth of business witnessed by the startup. In total, it has closed around €1 billion of mortgage loans.

Geert Van Kerckhoven, co-founder and CEO said: “Property buying and mortgages are the next frontier for digitisation and we’re going to lead the charge in doing so.”

Wouter Lachat, co-founder and CPO of Oper Credits added: “Further to increased investment in R&D and recruitment, it is international growth that we’re focusing on. We are focussing on France and Germany, which are the priority markets. We are also looking at Austrian, Czech and Slovakian opportunities. Our forecasts are strong as the market remains relatively untapped, and our product is ready to provide a solution to financial institutions large and small that want to improve their lending offer.”

Oper will focus on developing the building blocks needed to gather data from a variety of sources, including payroll, income stats, spending habits, etc. and then in turn process this information within the mortgage context to reduce the time-to-yes and ultimately create a better experience for the borrower.

Charles Birnbaum, partner for Bessemer Venture Partners, said: “The Oper team has built a powerful platform that enables the massive leap that European lenders will need to make in their digital mortgage offerings in the years to come.”