Krea’s new AI-solution helps lenders to acquire more customers and reduce underwriting costs

Many lenders have been struggling to service small business customers efficiently. Underwriting costs are high because lenders have low visibility about what rate a customer might accept. This results in lenders spending the majority of their time on leads that do not convert or generate revenues. Krea is expanding its financing service with a new AI-solution that helps lenders to acquire more customers and reduce underwriting costs. By using Krea’s Bid Attractiveness score lenders receive instant feedback about how likely their offers are to convert. Thereby, enabling them to focus on the most relevant customers.

Krea is offering small to medium sized businesses access to multiple lenders through its digital financing service. Small businesses are generally underserved by large banks - and 7 of 10 businesses in Sweden say that they find it difficult to get financing for investments¹. A reason for this are high underwriting costs that make it costly to serve smaller customers. Krea’s new AI-solution helps lenders to acquire more customers and reduce underwriting costs. Thereby reducing the cost for Lenders to serve these small businesses. 

• “We have seen that many lenders were sending out offers without much visibility of what a good offer for a customer is. Therefore, many lenders have a low acceptance rate of less than 5% on the loan offers they submit. By providing an indication of how likely a bid is to convert before it is submitted, we enable lenders to adjust their offer and also find customers that are more relevant to them” says Carsten Leth, Chief Commercial Officer at Krea

Krea’s AI-solution provides an attractiveness score to every offer that lenders make. The score provides an indication of how likely a specific customer is to choose the offer and recommendations on how the offer could be adjusted.

Through that information, key account managers and sales staff at Lenders are better positioned to allocate their time. This enables them to both win more business and make their sales processes more efficient.

• “We believe that we have a role to play in both simplifying the access to finance for small businesses and equally in helping lenders to become more digital and reduce their underwriting costs. This is the first step for us to make the matching experience for customers and lenders more efficient. We think taking a business loan should take hours and not weeks and does not need to cost a fortune.” says Carsten Leth, Chief Commercial Officer at Krea

The score is based on a machine learning model that reviews more than 50 000 offers Krea has presented to customers since December 2018. The feedback to lenders is instant and lenders are able to iterate and optimize their bids with live feedback. The model considers approximately 350 parameters for each offer such as the lender’s offers, the company’s financials, the credit history, the collateral provided, information about the business owners as well as other external data in order to give a reliable prediction. 

The AI-solution will be available to Lenders as a monthly subscription and is optimized for companies with revenue below 25 million Swedish crowns. 

For more information about Krea, visit krea.se

1 Företagarna - Financing report 2021

For more information, please contact:

Carsten Leth, Chief Commercial Officer at Krea 

Mail: carsten.leth@krea.se

Phone: +46 72 719 66 59

Krea is the natural place for small businesses to realize their growth potential by getting instant access to the best credit.

Krea’s digital comparison platform makes it easy for SMEs to find credit to the best possible terms. We have supported more than 15 000 Swedish companies to find financing by providing a market comparison of 25+ lenders. The service is digital and enables companies to find, compare and close financing up to 30 million Swedish crowns without hassle.