PUBLISHED: December 10, 2020
Why FinanZero?
When I moved to Brazil ten years ago, I experienced first-hand the major opportunities for disrupting the lending industry in the country. The Brazilian banking sector is characterized by an oligopolistic market structure, where the top five banks hold 80% of the total loans in the system and the interest rates are unreasonably high.
Meanwhile, a childhood friend of mine was the Co-founder of Lendo, the Swedish equivalent of FinanZero, which I followed closely as it gained momentum. As it happened, I met Patrik Axelsson (at Webrock) who introduced me to the opportunity of starting through a joint venture with Webrock Ventures and Zentro, and here we are!
How does Webrock support FinanZero?
As we started our operations, Webrock helped with seed funding and introduced me to valuable connections in Brazil. Today, Joakim Pops (at Webrock) and Patrik Axelsson are members of Finanzero’s Board of Directors.
The weekly meetings with the Webrock team and the rest of the Webrock companies are very useful as we share learnings and find synergies. We have partnerships with four of the Webrock companies right now.
How has Covid-19 impacted FinanZero?
As a consequence of the pandemic, we experienced an increase in consumer and banks’ digital adoption as well as a surge in demand for consumer loans. In Q3, FinanZero reached 8.5 million visits, repenting a QoQ growth of 54. Now, we have a total of 10.5 million loan applications and partnerships with four out of the five largest banks in Brazil.
A fun fact about you:
I have participated in 3 World Cups for 8mR yachts 🙂