Building on the success of its offices in Berlin, Luxembourg, London, Frankfurt and Vienna, Berlin-based fintech CrossLend is continuing its European expansion with the opening of a new office in Lisbon, Portugal. The Lisbon team – consisting of experts with many years of experience in banking, risk management and investment in digital lending – will help expand CrossLend’s product offering for asset and fund managers, in particular building out the company’s activities in the sphere of digital lending solutions.
There is a rapidly rising demand for private debt, alternative lending and digital lending opportunities – in particular amongst institutional investors. In Europe, there is a wide array of prospective investments in these areas, however, these remain largely untapped due to regulatory, operational and technological obstacles across-the-board.
“The key is to provide access to and management of investment opportunities through technology and digitalisation. This is where the CrossLend platform comes in. CrossLend offers an end-to-end solution for lenders and investors to initiate, process and manage loan portfolio transactions. We are seeing a growing demand for this, especially amongst asset and fund managers,” explains Marco Hinz, COO of CrossLend.
Pedro Carvalheiro, previously Head of Markets and Investments at the Portuguese bank Banco BNI Europa, heads the new Lisbon office. Together with his team, Carvalheiro is responsible for the expansion and development of CrossLend’s solutions for asset and fund managers in the areas of private debt, alternative lending and digital lending. To this end, the company has placed particular emphasis on building a team specialised in digital lending solutions.
Lisbon has already attracted significant attention in recent years with its rapidly growing tech and fintech ecosystem. “Portugal offers an exciting environment for CrossLend’s activities with the Portuguese government strongly supporting the development of the tech industry.” says Hinz.
One example of the government’s actions in this vein is the Council of Ministers’ Decision No. 29/2020 which was recently approved. This decision enables new technologies and innovations to be fostered more intensively. In addition, the Bank of Portugal, the CMVM (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the ASF (Insurance Supervisory Authority) founded a new initiative called the Portugal FinLab in 2018 together with the industry network, Portugal Fintech. The Portugal FinLab brings together all Portuguese financial regulators, establishing a direct line of communication with innovators with the goal of encouraging and simplifying collaboration within the Portuguese fintech ecosystem between all stakeholders.