SME heavyweight Prospa hits $200 million in loan originations
The fintech lender has also closed a successful funding round.
It’s been a big week for Prospa. Today, the small business lender announced it has reached $200 million in loan originations while also securing $50 million in additional capital from its latest funding round. To add to that, it was also the highest placed Australian fintech company on the Fintech100.
Beau Bertoli, joint CEO of Prospa, said this “significant milestone” will allow the business to continue to scale quickly.
“We’re growing fast, and getting smarter. We’ve found new funding sources. We’re coming up with new ways of doing things like evaluating credit risk, developing products, supporting our customers, partners and people. We’ve been able to lower our cost base as a result and we’re passing the benefit of these innovations on to our customers as pricing improvements.”
The $50 million debt funding, which is part of Prospa's strategy to scale operations, was from a large local institutional investor and has taken the total capital raised to over $100 million.
Speaking as part of a panel for Sydney's Spark Festival, hosted by the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Bertoli spoke about the difficulty of finding customers when he started the business five years ago.
"When we started, every day we had to come in and try to create a market, and although the customer problem existed, and it still exists today with millions of businesses in Australia not able to access finance, we had to find ways to build that awareness and really find ways to educate the market," Bertoli said.
"We always want more customers and we’ve built a business that can handle a significantly large number of customers, but finding the right partners and solving problems in unique ways is our focus. We believe the customers come if you do that first."
Following Prospa's quick growth and innovative products, it was listed on KPMG and H2 Venture's Fintech100 list at number 31. This was the highest of any Australian-based fintech company. Bertoli said it's a satisfying feeling to be leading the charge for Australian fintechs.
"We’ve observed what’s been happening around the world and that’s given us the insight to build the business we want, one that is built to last.”
Part of building that business is partnering with key financial providers and companies. In July, it announced a partnership with accounting group Reckon, allowing Reckon's customers access to a new type of finance facilitated by Prospa. This month, it also announced it would be offering interest-free business loans in a partnership with business educator The Entourage.
