ABN Amro and allies invest €14m in CrossLend
ABN Amro’s Digital Impact Fund (DIF) is teaming up with venture capital firm Earlybird and solarisBank to invest €14 million in Germany’s CrossLend.
Crosslend makes new friends
The fund has also agreed a partnership with this digital cross-border lending marketplace. ABN Amro says the partnership should help improve access to international capital for Dutch companies.
Hugo Bongers, DIF’s director, says: “CrossLend is an established player that has found a way to handle Europe’s complex cross-border capital market flows more efficiently [and] this investment further broadens and strengthens our local relationships in Germany, being one of the leading fintech countries in Europe.”
CrossLend platform facilitates investment in European loans while at the same time making available the capital so attracted.
For investors, the marketplace offers an opportunity to build a diversified portfolio of loans. Meanwhile, for lenders, it “offers additional possibilities to expand their lending”.
Oliver Schimek, CEO of CrossLend, says these parties are exactly the type of investor they need for further expansion. The trio do bring some clout – and the two banks are always lively in our fintech world.
Berlin-based Crosslend was founded in 2014 and has 40+ employees.
In addition to CrossLend, DIF has six other companies in its portfolio: Dutch player Ockto, solarisBank (hello again), US fintechs Cloud Lending Solutions and BehavioSec, Tink in Sweden, and an (unnamed) blockchain initiative in trade and commodity finance.
The latter could be VAKT. Back in June it launched its post-trade processing platform for commodities on the blockchain. ABN Amro was one of the names that contributed capital.
