Creative Dock, the creators of the peer-to-peer lending platform Zonky, have launched a similar service for small and medium-sized enterprises. The company believes that peer-to-business loans, especially in the current crisis, will thrive.
This week, the studio is launching its own P2P business loan platform Nafirmy.cz, which targets small and medium-sized companies, offering them the opportunity to apply for loans directly from individual investors.
Companies applying for a loan want to judge differently than banks. “We’re not just looking at the last year or the current cash flow,” says Martin Pejša, head of Creative Dock. “Our smart scoring means a deeper assessment of the company’s potential, the strength of the brand, even if only on a local scale, customer satisfaction, and the like,” he adds. If the company does not succeed in the loan application, they will offer it help with financial consolidation. They want to compete mainly with traditional banks.
“We have been thinking about the creation of a platform for a long time because the SME sector is and has been neglected by banks in terms of digitization,” notes Lenka Libánská, who leads the Nafirmy.cz project. “Banks focused mainly on retail, which is relatively well digitized, or on corporate clients, where the volume of money managed is much larger than in the case of smaller companies,” he said.
There are several similar platforms abroad, some of which were used at the time of the covid to distribute government support to companies. “That’s why we think it’s a model that has a place in the market. On the contrary, we have no problem cooperating with other platforms,” adds Libánská.
The minimum amount that an investor can contribute to a loan to companies is one thousand crowns. The value of invested money should be in the range of 3.99 to 14.99 percent per year. “It’s Creative Dock’s own project. Like, for example, Mutumutu’s healthy life insurance,” explains Libánská. “We will look for another investor for him in the future so that we can develop the service and introduce it to other markets,” he concludes. In the middle of the year, they also want to provide loans for the self-employed.