The Paris-based financing intermediary Silvr benefits from solid business with loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. The cooperation is also lucrative for the major US bank Citi. Silvr can broker new loans of up to €200 million. To do so, it is working with US major bank Citigroup and Channel Capital, a manager of alternative investment funds.
“There has been a strong increase in demand for loans across Europe, so we are pleased to be able to meet that demand with the new credit line,” said Nima Karimi, CEO of Silvr. Since its founding in 2020, the company says it has distributed a total of more than €150 million in financing to “several hundred” small and medium-sized enterprises in France and Germany.
Silvr acts as a broker between banks and companies. “Banks broker the loans through us because we can evaluate company data much faster, assess customers’ past performance, and forecast future revenues,” Karimi said. Other fintechs are also operating with this business model, such as Swiss lending startup Teylor and Berlin-based startup financing platform Recap.
The banks’ focus is the business with loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. At the beginning of July, the British bank Barclays, among others, provided Teylor with 275 million euros for new loans. Teylor had extended around 170 million euros in loans last year and, according to its figures, is planning a financing volume of approximately 300 million euros to more than 500 customers this year.
Recap received a credit line of more than $100 million (about 95 million euros) from Silicon Valley Bank in June of last year, which went into crisis in March of this year. However, the company says the credit line has not been affected.
Recap says it has more than doubled its key figures since the beginning of the year: the company now has over 1,000 companies on its platform.
