Listed fintech company Hypoport is joining the growing list of online platforms providing commercial property loans to investor. The company announced the 2022 launch of its platform Fundingport, a new joint venture with bank IKB, which will be taking a 30% stake in the venture.
The platform will see the two project partners bringing borrowers and lenders together, on what Hypoport describes as a "tender platform", matching them on the basis of certain criteria, with the system being set up for both commercial real estate financing as well as corporate loans.
Jan Bewarder, general manager at Hypoport, pointed to the whole issue of administration as the driver behind the new matching platform, with the entire loan processing over the term handled by digital tools. The goal, he said, is to make the administrative process efficient for all parties involved and to eliminate information asymmetries. "We want to make commercial real estate financing easier and faster."
In contrast to most other platforms on the market, Fundingport will be a pure B2B marketplace, meaning that the borrower does not activate the match himself, but that an intermediary, i.e. a financial distributor, plays the role of matchmaker. Hypoport has been running a similar system for years with its Europace platform, the largest in Germany, which brokers private construction financing, instalment loans and building society savings contracts.
The platform links together more than 750 partners - banks, insurers, and financial product distributors - and through a network of several thousand loan brokerage advisors executes more than 35,000 transactions a month, generating a volume of more than €8bn.
(REFIRE always tracks the Europace house price indices carefully, because they are based on actual transactions, rather than on advertised or guide prices, which may or may not be realised.)
Fundingport is still currently in its beta test phase, with IKB and Hypoport's subsidiary REM Capital providing fintech applications, prior to going live next year. Bewarder said the goal was clear - "We're investing a lot of time and effort so that we can ultimately establish ourselves as THE one digital platform for commercial real estate financing."
Hypoport has been growing at a rapid clip, with its recent results showing strong performance across all four of its principal business segments - Credit Platform, Private Clients, Real Estate Platform and Insurance Platform. Overall gross profit at the group rose in the first half of 2021 by 13% to €112m, with EBITDA and EBIT increasing even more sharply, by 21% and 28%, to €36 million and €22 million respectively.
CEO Ronald Slabke said, when presenting the results, The digitalisation of the credit, insurance and housing sectors will remain an unstoppable trend over the long term. This will enable us to continue to generate double-digit percentage growth in revenue and earnings beyond 2021."
