Stockholm-based European SME lender, DBT, has closed a SEK 3.1 billion ($280 million) debt facility to accelerate its lending to Swedish SMEs from NatWest (which backed Oneiro Solutions and BuiltAI) and Värde Partners. This is the largest funding transaction into the growing Nordic SME lending space to date.
To lend up to $280M to Swedish SMEs
The funding enables DBT to scale further and support more SMEs across all industries with simple access to growth funding. The SME lender has entered into a funding agreement with leading UK bank NatWest and the American global investment firm Värde Partners to lend up to SEK 3.1 billion ($280 million) to Swedish SMEs.
The funding agreement will enable DBT to continue meeting the strong demand for growth and innovation oriented corporate loans among small businesses. The company notes that the demand has increased in light of the current European energy crisis, fuel price increase and inflation surge, all of which have impacted SMEs.
“This is a milestone financing arrangement which enables us to support even more scaling SMEs across Sweden. It comes at the best possible time, as the SME companies we support see increased need for flexible yet long term strong financing in light of the current energy crisis, inflation surge and rising fuel prices,” said Alexis Kopylov, CEO and co-founder of DBT.
“Stable access to credit is crucial to the success and growth of SMEs and their positive impact on the economy. Our backing of DBT represents a further step towards our commitment to remove barriers to enterprises and allow them to grow. DBT shares our commitment to serve the growing SME market and we are pleased to further support DBT’s ambition and work with them,” said Olmo Montesanti, Co-Head of Private Financing Sales Europe at NatWest Markets N.V., one of NatWest’s entities in Europe.
“We welcome the opportunity to establish this partnership to help fund DBT’s aspirations and further expand our provision of commercial finance capital in Europe. DBT have invested considerably in their platform and have developed differentiated SME loan underwriting capabilities,” said Aneek Mamik, Partner and Global Head of Financial Services at Värde Partners.
“NatWest has been a great partner to work with and we’re grateful for their continued strong support as lender. With this new transaction we also welcome Värde Partners as a new collaboration partner. Both are well renowned financial institutions sharing our commitment to close the SME funding gap,” added Alexis Kopylov.
Uses proprietary credit intelligence tech
DBT was founded by Alexis Kopylov in 2017 in Stockholm. It uses a proprietary credit intelligence technology platform to leverage real-time client data and enable tailored, scalable funding with faster turnaround times for borrowers. The platform has allowed it to lend more than SEK 2 billion ($180 million) over the past six years. As per DBT data, SMEs that receive backing through its loans grow on average seven times faster than those that don’t.
Leveraging its credit intelligence platform DBT combines a rational tech and data-driven process with a personal and qualitative collaboration to offer SMEs simple access to growth funding. DBT’s corporate financing is aimed at limited companies across all industries that need to borrow SEK 3-30 million. Notably, DBT is a registered financial institution with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.
