Symbid Gets The Crowd Involved In SME Finance

In a recent interview with PYMNTS, Korstiaan Zandvliet, the cofounder and CEO of alternative lending platform Symbid, elaborated on how the company serves SMEs in need of capital through its just-released Funding Network.

“What sets us apart from the competition is the fact that an entrepreneur can solicit investments both from the crowd and from institutional investors, and we put a great emphasis on monitoring those companies in a very data-driven way,” the executive said.

While the Funding Network is just one month old, Symbid is already strengthening its capabilities. In an announcement made late last week, the Netherlands-based company revealed that the Funding Network now supports crowdfunding.

“By bringing peer-to-business loans in-house, we’re staking our claim as the go-to European platform for entrepreneurs in search of funding,” Kandvliet said in a statement, adding that the Funding Network already processes more than $50 million in transactions every month.

According to the cofounder, the new crowdfunding service will continue Symbid’s dedication to using data analysis to lessen lending risk for investors. “Using our advanced monitoring tool and independent pricing, we’re confident that loan crowdfunding at Symbid is an improvement on the current market standard.”

The platform provides funders with continual insight into the performance of their investments, the company added. Investors will receive their returns every quarter in addition to gaining full-time access to a dashboard to monitor their finances. According to FIZ lawyers’ Jurian Snijders, whose company will be providing legal support for the new crowdfunding services, the level of transparency Symbid is offering to its investors is “a huge step forward in the world of alternative financing.”

The firm added that it decided to offer crowdfunding in an effort to service more entrepreneurs that need working capital.

According to Symbid, the first company to receive funding through the crowdfunding service is health care review app CareRate.