Kreditech, the consumer finance technology group, announced yesterday the 100% acquisition of Polish financial tech outfit Kontomierz for a seven digit amount and Kreditech shares.
Founded in 2009, Kontomierz has net revenues of €1 million at positive EBIT, and three-digit annual growth. This is especially impressive considering Kontomierz’s staff is only 16-strong; this elite team will continue to work as an independent section with The Kreditech Group. KontoX- a Kontomierz offering- helps to verify client identity and gain read-only access to bank accounts providing a missing API to bank systems that can sync with any bank globally using sophisticated financial technology.
Kontomierz’s CEO and founder Marcin Truszel believes that this new partnership will help accelerate and diversify the growth of Kontomierz: “Kreditech has a unique big data credit scoring technology,” he says. “We are now part of its vision to serve the 4 billion unbanked and underbanked individuals worldwide. This is the ideal platform for our international expansion and further profitability.”
Sebastian Diemer, founder and CEO of the Kreditech Group, is similarly enthusiastic about their shared future. “With its technology Kontomierz enables us to get unique data in real-time,” he states. “Our subsidiary companies will hence provide an even better banking service to a bigger target group,” he adds, hinting at the strategic rationale to strengthen the Group’s position worldwide.
With this union, Kontomierz can now expect outreach into Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Spain in 2015, whilst Kontomierz will help to fuel Kreditech Group’s growth of 500% percent per annum. Kreditech’s technology, which uses machine learning algorithms to build credit profiles based on 15,000 data points, has already proved extremely popular. Since its launch two years ago, Kreditech has served 2 million customers in nine countries, and is the fastest-growing European technology in the consumer finance space. With such an impressive track record and eye for lucrative acquisitions, the future certainly looks bright for The Kreditech Group.
(Image credit: Kreditech)
