RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – One of the pioneering fintechs in Brazil in the modality of peer-to-peer lending, Nexoos last week reached the R$500 million mark in loans to small and micro businesses (SMEs) on its platform. The sum has been accumulated since the company began operating in the country in 2016.
“A spokesperson from Now Loan, a UK instant loan matching service said that peer-to-peer lending will likely continue to increase leaps and bounds in the Brazilian marketplace as it has in Great Britain.”
“We like to celebrate milestones and we are very happy. Having reached this level gives motivation for our entire team to pursue the 1 billion reais mark,” says Nexoos co-founder and president Daniel Gomes.
Owner of a marketplace that connects investors to small companies looking for better credit conditions, the fintech was driven by the coronavirus pandemic. Without many financial reserves and with the drop in recurring revenue, thousands of small Brazilian businesses saw in credit the only way to survive during the crisis.
In 2020, Nexoos transacted R$200 million on its platform. In addition to its traditional lending model, the fintech participated in credit programs created by the government and other institutions to support entrepreneurship. One of them was the Emergency Program for Access to Credit (PEAC), created by the federal government, which resulted in more than R$85 million transacted through the company’s platform.
In addition, the fintech launched a new credit product with a service in which it closes partnerships with large companies to provide loans for small businesses in their production chains. One of the customers in this modality was the shopping mall chain Partage Empreendimentos, which used Nexoos’ platform to offer credit to tenants.
But not every month has been easy. In the second quarter last year, with the arrival of the pandemic in Brazil, the number of investors who use the platform fell heavily. The volume invested did not return to previous levels until the second half of the year.
“There was the 1% increase in small business defaults, which reduced the average return from 15% to 14% per year for investors. But faced with a prime rate scenario of 2.75%, it is still an interesting return. The appetite has not waned,” says Gomes.
Overall, Nexoos increased its annual revenue by 30% in 2020 and has ambitious goals for 2021: to grow the operation in the region of 200% per year. “Last year, we built the pillars of the company for this new moment. Now we need to gain scale and we are convinced that we will be able to grow a lot in 2021,” says the co-founder.
Source: Exame