Oper Credits, a Belgian-Swiss mortgage SaaS firm, has secured €11 million in a Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners (that invested in WiredScore) & ABN Amro Ventures. It also saw participation from existing shareholders, including Techstars, Pitchdrive and Verve Ventures.
With this new funding, Oper Credits will focus on developing the building blocks needed to gather data from a variety of sources, including payroll, income stats, spending habits etc. It will process this information within the mortgage context to reduce the time and ultimately create a better experience for the borrower.
Wouter Lachat Co-Founder and CPO of Oper Credits said: “Further to increased investment in R&D and recruitment, it is international growth that we’re focusing on. For us, France and Germany are the priority markets, as well as Austrian, Czech and Slovakian opportunities too. Our forecasts are strong, the market remains relatively untapped, and our product is ready to provide a solution to financial institutions large and small that want to improve their lending offer.”
Nick Van Berckelaer, Co-Founder and CTO of Oper Credits said: “In fact, we wouldn’t have secured this funding if it wasn’t for every single person who works with us and we’re incredibly thankful for their time and efforts. There’s no doubt we’ll be hiring even more in the future to help us grow our loan book, client-base and ultimately our revenue. We have huge ambitions and need the right people to help us achieve them!”
Charles Birnbaum, Partner for Bessemer Venture Partners in New York, said: “The Oper team has built a powerful platform that enables the massive leap that European lenders will need to make in their digital mortgage offerings in the years to come. We were impressed by the company’s significant traction across Europe and believe they are in an excellent position to become the market leader in mortgage solutions for banks with their scalable, pan-European approach.”
Tim Wanders, Executive Director at ABN AMRO Ventures, said: “We know that there is a huge challenge in digitalization of banking services, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on the mortgage service side. We were impressed with the progress made by the company and believe that they will provide an essential piece in the mortgage value chain of tomorrow.”
Supercharge digitisation of mortgages
Oper was founded in 2018 by three Belgian entrepreneurs with backgrounds across lending and digital engineering – Geert Van Kerckhoven, Nick Van Berckelaer and Wouter Lachat. Property buying and mortgages are the next frontier for digitisation and the company is all set to supercharge the same. Now, it is a leading provider of digitised mortgage solutions in Belgium and Switzerland and has a significant footprint across Europe.
Oper’s digital mortgage solution fits into the “post-branch strategy” of many retail banks in Europe. Many European banks are moving away from the philosophy that every important product is bought in the local bank branch.
Currently, Oper Credits employs a total of 45 people from 12 different nationalities living in 16 different cities across Europe. Its offices are located in Antwerp, Zurich and Minsk and serve a total of 13 clients.
