UK-based FinTech kennek, which aims to streamline operations for lenders, has raised $4.5m in its pre-seed round.
The round was led by Dutch Founders Fund, ffVC and Plug and Play Ventures.
Founded in 2021 by Thibault Lancksweert, Edmund Parsons and Xavier De Pauw, kennek aims to solve two major pain points. The first is the operational scalability for lenders and investors, and the second is efficient funding of credits.
Having decades of experience within the credit sector, the company’s founders noted that the alternative lending sector was largely reliant on manual workflows and data stored in spreadsheets.
These inefficiencies mean lenders struggle to access funding from institutional investors, which need reliable and connected data, and robust and scalable processes. The ultimate goal of kennek is to establish a scalable and robust lending infrastructure that is accessible to everyone and can facilitate more funding to flow into the real economy.
To solve the problems, kennek has built an end-to-end operating system that streamlines operations for lenders, credit investors, corporates and servicers in the alternative credit sector. Users can manage their risks, control their data, scale operations and access funding.
It also boasts a marketplace for funding of loans and loan portfolios. Here, its operating system reconnects all the relevant parties in lending.
During its first year of trading, the FinTech has hired 20 staff and launched a plug-and-play operating system that caters for a broad variety of lenders and credit products. Its clients span SME loans, R&D credit and Commercial Real Estate.
Dutch Founders Fund’s Laurens Groenendijk said, “De Pauw, Lancksweert and Parsons bring such varied and necessary experience together to address the inefficiencies of lending. The uniquely designed product and lending rails that kennek is creating will make it much easier for lenders worldwide to launch, operate and scale.”
In other lending news, small business lender iwoca has increased its funding line from Pollen Street Capital to £170m, up from £125m.
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