Equal access to financial opportunities is critical for the development of SMEs globally, regardless of the markets they operate in, and iFactor’s recent rebrand to Lendox marks the commitment to help European SMEs achieve equitable and smart lending.
The move comes in the context of iFactor’s fast growth and the expansion of their international footprint. Lendox’s vision of an inclusive economy is a direct translation of SMEs’ real-world challenges, a commitment to helping underserved businesses that drive economic growth.
Lendox’s mission is focused on embedding its AI-powered tools into the lending infrastructure of banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs). The company helps these institutions reduce default rates while opening the door to new lending opportunities. The technology gets rid of manual processes, enabling more agile loan approvals. Speed and accuracy in lending are indicators of SME development, which is why Lendox improves operational efficiency.
The Right Time For Smart Lending
The core business of Lendox is, therefore, centered on solving a long-standing problem: SMEs, the backbone of any economy, are often shut out from traditional financing options. According to recent global trade finance figures, more than 90% of SMEs struggle to access funding. This issue persists even though these businesses are actually critical to creating jobs and generating economic value. The reason? Most traditional financial institutions view SMEs as risky due to insufficient or unreliable credit data.
The company’s flagship product, a credit intelligence tool, empowers banks and financial institutions to make faster, more informed lending decisions. The twist in their approach comes from introducing this new analytical dimension in the scoring process, with features such as credit risk assessment and loan monitoring, by tapping into alternative data sources. This tool draws from over 12,000 data points—including social media activity, digital footprints, and transaction behaviors—to build a comprehensive, accurate picture of a business’s creditworthiness.
This centralized due diligence process goes beyond the traditional credit scoring models, which often exclude SMEs. The ability to assess risk using both conventional and unconventional data allows Lendox’s partners to serve a broader range of businesses without compromise. Their technology can fundamentally improve the way banks assess creditworthiness, opening up opportunities for businesses that would otherwise be overlooked.
The more accurate the data, the more confident financial institutions can be in their lending decisions. With their previous model, the company has already helped over 2,500 SMEs access financing and secured partnerships with multiple financial institutions.
This shift gives SMEs access to easier paths to capital, with a data-rich approach that addresses one of the key pain points for banks: how to manage risk while expanding their portfolios.
The Lendox team brings together professionals with highly complementary skills, from a serial entrepreneur turned investor CEO and with 2 senior bankers to a COO with more than 20 years of experience in project management, KYC and AML, as well as top level technology development specialists and the CTO with extensive experience in software services to banks in US, Switzerland and Germany.
The company’s ability to efficiently combine new technology with practical application has already attracted key customers with banks and non-bank financial institutions, such as MasterCard, Visa, Raiffeisen Bank or KPMG. Because of an increasing demand for more financial systems, Lendox stands ready to scale—bringing financial institutions and underbanked businesses.
“Incumbents (banks in this case) are prone to inability of incremental innovation due to their size and complex structures. What determines trust as regulated (heavily compliant) institutions is also standing against their low capacity to adapt. SMEs are novel corporations, different from traditional corporate customers banks worked with in the 70’s and 80’s, still banks could not yet fully adapt to these new customer segments and not yet raised their service to match the importance of the SMEs in the European Economy. The option is to work with us, fintechs, that do just one thing and we do it both agile and well.”
The rebranding to Lendox is taking place at a strategic moment of their growth, after attracting significant international attention through the participation in high-profile accelerator programs, such as the Visa Innovation Europe and the Startup Wise Guys Accelerator, and securing prestigious awards, including “Elevator Lab of RBI Grand finale 2022”, “Fintech Startup of the Year-2023” and “Fintech & Bank Collaboration of the Year 2023.” On top of this, their global readiness comes at a time when there’s a real need for an inclusive economy, and when smart lending is being reclaimed as a tool for sustainable growth.
