How Qred took its SME lending business to the next level

September 02, 2019 | Louise Basse

With the ambition to make the lending process a walk in the park for small businesses, Qred has quickly taken the position as the market leader within digital SME lending in the Nordics.

To offer the best solution to their clients, Qred teamed up with Nordic API Gateway to create data-driven credit scoring solutions that's fit for the future.

To explore how they’ve used access to real-time data to up their lending game, we sat down with Qred’s CEO, Emil Sunvisson.

The Netflix model for lending

Fast. Automated. User-driven.

That’s how Emil describes Qred: The successful lending platform for businesses, that’s based in the Swedish capital, Stockholm:

“Our ambition with Qred is to help small businesses to get a better cash flow. We’re doing that by providing micro-businesses with small, instant, and short-term loans to increase their liquidity,” Emil says and continues:

“If you’re a small carpentry business with three to four employees, it can be extremely difficult to have enough liquidity to pay upfront for the materials you need to proceed with large orders”. 

And that’s where Qred comes into the picture:

“With no starting fee, our clients pay a monthly subscription fee as long as they have the loan. Usually, our clients make a 12 month subscription, but if they want to pay back the loan faster than that, their subscription ends right away. It’s as easy as canceling your Netflix account,” Emil explains.

Why new technology matters

Because Qred is live across the Nordics and the Netherlands, it was very important for the company to choose a solution that covers all banks across the Nordics and the Netherlands.

That’s why they decided to team up with Nordic API Gateway. With one simple integration, Qred was easily able to retrieve bank data from banks across all their different markets. 

In this way, Qred uses the new technology to create accurate and instant credit scoring solutions to the benefit of their clients:

“The technology behind Nordic API Gateway has upgraded our service because we’re now able to make much better informed decisions. Before we got access to real-time bank data through Nordic API Gateway, our credit scoring solution was based on downloaded files with long lists of old data”.

According to Emil, that emphasises how important new technology and legislation is because it enables businesses to create better financial solutions to the benefit of consumers.

The future of lending is automated

One of Qred’s goals is to create a fully automated lending platform that’s based on data-driven credit scoring solutions. 

And with access to real-time data and a categorisation engine, Qred made a valuable upgrade when they teamed up with Nordic API Gateway, the CEO explains:

“Ultimately, new solutions like ours empower businesses with a better cash flow because we’re able to offer better services. In the future, I’m definite that we’ll see a lot more automated lending platforms that will benefit small business owners more than ever”.