Marketplace Lending

Lendable, a leading AI-powered consumer finance platform, has raised £210m in a funding round that saw its valuation reach £3.5bn.

Swedish buy now pay later (BNPL) unicorn Klarna is reportedly facing a hefty downround, which would put its valuation at a third of its previous.

Uganda-based digital lending platform Numida has reportedly raised $12.3m in its pre-Series A funding round, which comprised of equity and debt.

Avant, a credit-first FinTech company, has received $250m in corporate debt and redeemable preferred equity from Ares Management Alternative Credit funds.

Brazilian FinTech company Blipay, which aims to improve financial services experiences, has reportedly raised $6.7m in a debt financing round.

AXA Venture Partners (AVP), a global venture capital firm specialising in high-growth, technology-enabled companies, announced the launch of a new strategy, targeting late-stage tech companies with a €1.5bn fund.

Improving the customer experience has become one of the biggest priorities for financial services. In fact, 63% of firms place customer experience as their number one focus as they try to meet the evolving demands of their customers. Lending is one area of finance where the fight to provide the best customer experience is really heating up. Many have even dubbed it as the next major battlefield.

Madrid-based FinTech company, Fence, has raised €1.8 million in its pre-seed financing round.

Yenmo, a FinTech startup providing instant loans against mutual funds, has successfully completed its latest funding round, securing $500,000 from the Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator, Y Combinator, according to a report from Business Standard.

London-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company Zopa has become the first in the UK market to surpass £2bn in loans. It has facilitated 300,000 loans since launching 12 years ago.