Brazilian startup Creditas is revolutionizing credit in the world’s third largest lending market


, Brazilian startup Creditas is revolutionizing credit in the world’s third largest lending market, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

After twelve years working for banks and consulting firms on the digital transformation of financial services, Creditas founder Sergio Furio finally found a problem he felt he could build a business around while at dinner with his Brazilian wife.

Over dinner in their New York apartment one night in 2011 she casually mentioned that consumers in her country were paying over 200% interest rates on consumer loans. The longtime fintech professional basically did a spit-take. After digging a bit deeper into the problems that consumers faced, Furio had his business idea and Creditas was born.

Roughly six years after that fateful dinner, Furio is wrapping up a $50 million venture capital financing round (one of the largest in Latin America’s history)  and preparing to radically reshape lending in a country that sorely needs it.

The heart of Furio’s innovation is the notion of a collateralized loan. While the lenders that require collateral to issue a loan in the U.S. are typically catering to low income customers, Furio views collateral as one of the only ways to lower interest rates for would-be borrowers in Brazil.

So far, the company has originated about $100 million in collateralized loans. Furio’s company charges anywhere from 17%to 25% for home equity loans and between 23% and 50% for auto equity loans, according to Furio.

Creditas actually makes money in three ways: through loan origination fees; through servicing fees; and return on investment for the junior tranches in the funds that supply the loans.

There’s an acute need for services like Creditas in Brazil. Banks in the country don’t typically offer loans with collateral, because they prefer the high-margin unsecured loans that they’re used to. A typical personal loan has 120% APR and revolving credit cards in the country typically have 480% APR.

So far, less than 1% of the loans that Furio’s Creditas has issued have resulted in default. According to internal projections that default rate may go up next year… to 2%.

, Brazilian startup Creditas is revolutionizing credit in the world’s third largest lending market, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

For Brazilians, the benefits of collateralizing the loans are obvious, says Furio. The company sees lower default rates because the consumer has aligned incentives. Then even if customers do default losses aren’t as great, because there’s still the underlying asset that covers part of the risk of the loan; finally, these loans are typically a bigger size that have a lower rate of return and high maturity, so it reduces installment pressure, according to a company spokesman.

That’s the opportunity that attracted investors like lead investor Vostok Emerging Finance (VEF), the publicly traded investment firm focused on early and growth stage fintech companies across emerging. Previous investors including Kaszek Ventures, Quona Capital, QED Investors, International Finance Corporation and Naspers Fintech also participated in the investment.

Creditas currently has 285 employees, up from 110 at the beginning of the year, and Furio said that the new money will continue to expand the company’s labor force and work on its relationship with regulators.

“We operate through a banking-partner model, we book the loan in a traditional bank and then sell that loan to an investment fund that is the vehicle that is funded by institutional investors and ourselves. This model is 100% compliant with regulation, although it generates a dependency,”Said Furio. “Central Bank in Brazil has been an ally and is crating a new regulation that will allow us to get our own license to issue the loans directly. This has already finished the public consultation phase and we expect it to be effective in Q1-2018.,” Furio said.

, Brazilian startup Creditas is revolutionizing credit in the world’s third largest lending market, #Bizwhiznetwork.com Innovation ΛI

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