Finpoint (UK) Ltd, the unique online financial matchmaking service that connects SMEs with banks and financial institutions that are ready to lend, today announces the signing of the first financing it has facilitated in the UK.
Currently 12 lenders are signed up to the platform offering a range of financing opportunities to UK companies. Following its launch in Germany in 2010, Finpoint has facilitated financings totalling €350 million. The Finpoint German service has 160 institutional financiers on board and over 2000 SME users registered seeking finance.
Finpoint provides a user-friendly, always-available and totally secure web platform that efficiently connects financiers that are ready to do business with companies seeking finance. The Finpoint system is analogous to a personal dating website. Companies seeking finance submit their profile and financing requirement which is then posted anonymously on the platform for financiers to browse or search. An interested financier clicks to offer to enter into a standard confidentiality agreement with the SME, which in turn clicks its acceptance if it finds the financier acceptable. Only then are the full details of the company seeking finance released to the lenders, who will then directly - and without further involvement by Finpoint - contact each other to negotiate the financing. In this way SMEs can expect to receive multiple proposals from different financiers in a matter of days from which it can choose between financing structures, price and other terms.
Commenting on today's launch client announcement, Michael Klein, CEO and Founder of Finpoint GmbH, said: "The UK's banks are regularly berated for not meeting the lending requirements of SME businesses, but a sustainable economic recovery needs growing SMEs with access to funding. Finpoint facilitates that transformative funding by providing UK businesses with a system that generates alternative financing proposals in a short period with limited effort on the part of the SME, which has been tried and tested in Germany for nearly three years and that has proven itself to be both secure and uniquely fit for purpose - a genuine business financing success story."
Rainer Plentl, Director of Finpoint (UK) added: "The Finpoint idea is a comparison website for SMEs, throwing up comparisons not only between cost and other terms but also alternative financing structures. The Finpoint system seeks standardised data from SMEs, eliminating the need for an SME to design its description of itself, cold call on financiers and complete multiple application forms for financiers who turn out not even to have an in -principle interest. The platform enables financiers to review the financing requirements of a range of SMEs, which can be filtered to show up only those companies fitting the financier's criteria. The transparency of the system increases competition, maximising the probability of securing finance and securing the finest terms."