Today marks the birth of Monto. With a firm vision that growth financing should be readily available to all healthy businesses, we equip banks, fintechs and other lenders focused on small & medium sized businesses (SMEs) with the technology they need to transform their lending.

The most meaningful change underway in the financial industry today, we believe, is innovation around business financing. While consumers long ago learned to love and expect seamless services — from instant money transfers to Netflix-type user experiences — the same has hardly been true for entrepreneurs and business owners.

When it comes to their most essential need, financing, the problems of access and quality remain largely unsolved. The financial industry has long struggled to understand and meet the unique needs of SME businesses — the backbone of the economy — whether it’s because of manual processes, lack of access to actionable credit data, or poor financial incentives.

But this is changing. The possibilities to offer smarter, faster and more economically viable financing are growing. Thanks to rapid technological advances on the one hand, and growing demand among businesses for smarter financial services on the other, the next five years of business financing will look nothing like the past one-hundred (and that’s a good thing).

Monto was founded to accelerate this development. Our vision is to provide easy access to fair financing for all businesses, everywhere. This vision is rooted in the conviction that growth capital — delivered to the right business, at the right time — can have major positive ripple effects in terms of job growth, GDP and innovation.

And we have built the technology to make this vision a reality.

Lenders need better tools to succeed

As we launch from our base in Stockholm, our team is determined to help lenders navigate a fast-changing world. Both new and incumbent lenders face challenges (alongside huge business opportunities) trying to serve the needs of the massive SME segment that represents 99% of all companies.

In the wake of the pandemic, it’s become even more important to serve customers through digital channels, as well as to leverage data in decision making. Assessing credit risk on SME businesses, after all, is challenging enough as it is .. so how could you possibly do that by relying on pre-pandemic financial reports? (Our short answer is: you can’t.)

The bottom line is this: in a changing world, business lenders need a new set of tools to successfully serve SME businesses.

With an end-to-end lending platform, Monto’s goal is to empower new and incumbent lenders with flexible, data-driven capabilities suited for today’s and tomorrow’s business needs — whether the borrower is a software startup seeking new investment or an industrial company looking for bridge financing to cover overdue payments.

By providing real time data connectivity to borrowers’ accounting systems and banks, we can help lenders make better credit decisions, fast-track onboarding, implement proactive portfolio monitoring, and more. Leveraging data insights and automation throughout the lending journey, lenders can take their offering to the next level.

Key features of Monto’s modular platform:

• Broad access to enriched real time borrower data from leading Nordic accounting systems and banks (with customers’ full consent)
• Customisable, easy-to-use products that cater to everything from seamless onboarding to proactive portfolio monitoring.
• Ready-packaged business lending and invoice financing/factoring solutions.
• Added dimensions of intelligence and efficiency throughout the lending journey; powered by tailored features, forward looking projections, smart and streamlined lending administration, etc.

Brave new world of SME lending

As we continue to develop our platform, we’re thrilled to see the industry’s growing appetite for modern lending solutions. Offering digital, real time lending capabilities is fast becoming a must-have for challengers and incumbents alike.

This demand is evident among our partners. One of Sweden’s largest banks, SEB, partnered with Monto to leverage real time borrower data in order to make better credit decisions within its SME segment. Meanwhile, Profina, a traditional financing company, is well on its way to transforming its entire business with our end-to-end proposition — allowing for applications to be processed in minutes instead of days, among numerous other benefits.

We are equally seeing other industry actors — from fintech startups to financial providers entering lending from adjacent categories — keen to offer smarter financing products and services. Going forward, our focus will be to help all types of lenders achieve sustainable business outcomes, be it through improved efficiency, increased margins or reduced portfolio risk.

By bringing humility, hard work and a healthy dose of imagination to this mission, we believe we can affect positive, win-win-win type change in the business financing industry — and thus ensure that growth capital is within reach for any ambitious entrepreneur.

We’re thrilled to get going. And we warmly welcome you to join the ride.

Sincerely, The Monto team

We’d love to hear from you - so please reach out at hello@monto.ai if you have questions or want to learn more about how our technology can help transform your lending business.