Frankfurt am Main, April 11th 2022. The two FinTechs Exaloan and UI Enlyte are launching a strategic cooperation and link their platforms for digital lending and digital assets. Asset managers and institutional investors using UI Enlyte’s platform will in the future have direct access to fintech lenders and loan originators through Exaloan’s analytics platform, enabling them to develop innovative investment products.

Exaloan has successfully operated the B2B marketplace Loansweeper since 2019 on which the company connects institutional capital with digital lending platforms. Loans issued by banks and lending platforms are made available to investors through a fully digital investment infrastructure. Already today, investors can use it to access different groups of loans such as SME or consumer loans worldwide. In addition, Exaloan provides real-time independent credit scoring using Big Data and machine learning, enabling investors to compare and fund loans across platforms. As a marketplace, Exaloan links lending platforms with institutional investors, opening up lending as a new asset class for investors. 

The UI Enlyte platform launched in December 2020 and is one of the world’s first end-to-end investment platforms for digital assets, providing fund initiators and institutional investors with regulatory compliant access to digital assets. As an independent technical platform, UI Enlyte is a pioneer in Europe, offering a holistic digital approach. All main phases of the investment process can be presented digitally on one platform: from onboarding, issuance and transaction of digital assets to administration and reporting. The issuance of so-called STOs, i.e. Security Token Offerings, is one of several product dimensions that will extend to digital funds in the future.

Great digitalization potential for global lending market

“We are currently witnessing a rapid shift of lending to businesses and households into digital channels. The potential here is huge, with the global lending market estimated to be worth a total of almost $140 trillion,” explains Luca Frignani, CEO and founder of Exaloan. Although the digital lending segment is still young, during the past year alone a loan volume of more than 20 billion euros has been granted to households and small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe. Investors benefit from higher spreads of five to 15 percent and short maturities. At the same time, they can incorporate clear sustainability (ESG) criteria into the financing process.

“Combining digital assets and digital lending digitizes the entire production chain from loan origination to investment opportunity, creating huge efficiency potential,” said Daniel Andemeskel, CEO and Co-Founder of UI Enlyte and Head of Innovation Management at Universal Investment, which is a leading European fund service platform and Super ManCos driver of UI Enlyte.

Through the new infrastructure, both whole and partial loan receivables can be funded and traded. This not only digitizes the entire funding process but also creates a secondary market for the loan receivables. “In addition to getting access to the asset class of digitally originated loans, investors also benefit from increased liquidity,” says Romy Ritter, COO of Exaloan. 

The newly developed infrastructure enables unprecedented transparency and tokenization down to the individual loans. “This is also a first step to build connected ecosystems, which is one of Enlyte’s main goals. To fully link both technology platforms in such a short time has been a tour de force of both teams,” said Khai-Uy Pham, CTO & Co-Founder of UI Enlyte.

Exploiting the potential of digital platforms together

As part of the cooperation, the respective strengths of the two partners can be fully leveraged as digital B2B platforms. “UI Enlyte is a perfect partner for us because their unique holistic approach allows them to digitally cover the entire asset management value chain, from onboarding new investors to issuing and administering digital assets to custody and wallets. In addition, as part of the Universal Investment Group, they have a broad network of asset managers and institutional investors,” Frignani said. 

“With Exaloan as a strategic partner, we can provide our clients with access to digitally issued loans as a very attractive investment. This will enable the creation of innovative investment strategies and investment products for this new asset class in the future. Exaloan creates real added value, particularly through increased transparency for investors, independent real-time credit scoring and extensive analytics capabilities, and consistently exploits the enormous potential for digitization in the lending market,” says Daniel Andemeskel. As part of the cooperation, both partners will in the future offer a comprehensive end-to-end infrastructure for issuing loans as digital loan tokens.

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, November 25, 2021 ‒ creditshelf Aktiengesellschaft, the leading financier for digital SME loans in Germany, and the data scientists at Exaloan AG confirm the added value of digital SME loans for the portfolios of institutional investors in a joint study.

Based on ECB data and the loan book of the creditshelf Loan Fund, the joint study elaborates the potential of the new asset class in the portfolio mix. Digital SME loans, such as those arranged by creditshelf’s lending platform, show a low correlation with other asset classes like equity, real estate, corporate or government bonds, and private equity. They are therefore ideally suited for further diversification of existing portfolios.

Dr. Tim Thabe, founding partner and CEO of creditshelf, explains: “We always knew that we are offering an attractive asset class for investors. Our new study with Exaloan officially confirms this. Especially companies of the German Mittelstand rarely have access to the capital markets and are therefore difficult to invest in by institutional investors. Through our platform, we offer a simple, digital and customizable way to invest directly into the German Mittelstand.”

In a volatility comparison, digital SME loans are significantly below other asset classes, even in comparison to a similar fixed income segment like corporate bonds. At the same time, they have much greater potential in terms of net returns. With the creditshelf Loan Fund portfolio, for example, the track record showed that investor returns amounted to up to 6% per year.

“We used bank lending data from the ECB to get a clearer picture of long-term return estimates for digital SME loans. When analyzing the data, we found that SME loans could be a great asset to include in an investor’s portfolio because they offer higher returns with a shorter duration than traditional fixed income securities like corporate bonds. By taking a close look at the creditshelf Loan Fund, we were able to validate our estimates with actual data. The study shows that institutional investors can benefit significantly from adding digital SME loans to their portfolio to enhance returns in a meaningful and stable way. Having the right tools to construct a diversified loan portfolio and control default risk is key, which is what our analytics engine is built for,” explains Luca Frignani, CEO and founding partner of Exaloan.