France-based lending marketplace Lendix has raised $37m in a funding round co-led by insurance provider Allianz and venture capital firm Idinvest, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
Insurance companies CNP Assurances and Matmut also participated, as did family offices CIR and Decaux Frères Investissements.
Lendix operates an online lending marketplace that enables private investors to provide capital to small and medium-sized enterprises. It has been developing a platform called Iris that parses business data to build generate a credit score and generate an actionable database.
Longer term, Iris is expected to prevent fraud and make it possible to reach out to companies that will need a loan in the near future.
The company is currently active in France, Spain and Italy and operates a cross-border financing model, meaning French users can back Italian firms.
The company hopes to expand to seven countries by next year, beginning with Germany and the Netherlands. Allianz is acting as a strategic backer and will promote Lendix to its corporate clients to facilitate a launch in Germany.
Lendix previously raised $13.5m from CNP Assurances and Matmut in 2016, with commitments from Zencap AM, Partech, Decaux Frères Investissements, Sycomore Factory and Weber Investissement.
The company has also raised debt financing from CNP Assurances, Matmut, Eiffel IM, Groupama, Zencap AM, Decaux Frères Investissements and European Investment Bank most recently adding $245m in January 2018 to invest through the platform.