Led · Series C · Aug 2020

Habito operates a digital mortgage brokerage and home-buying service that helps buyers with mortgage applications and financing. The company launched in April 2016 and is led by founder and CEO Daniel Hegarty. It has introduced Habito Plus, a homebuying service that brings a buyer’s mortgage application into the process. Habito reports it has submitted more than £9 billion worth of mortgages. Prior to this round the company had raised more than £68m in equity from well-known investors. The business continues to expand its product offering around mortgage sourcing and homebuying support. Habito digitises the mortgage process, initially operating as a digital mortgage brokerage and later expanding into direct lending after regulatory approval, starting with buy-to-let mortgages. It integrates conveyancing and reduces required documents to speed mortgage application-to-offer times, and offers Instant Decision technology to partners. The company has launched Habito Plus to bundle mortgage applications, conveyancing and surveys into a single end-to-end home-buying service. Habito also provides a broker portal giving more than 3,000 external brokers access to its buy-to-let products and technology. The business recently became B Corp certified, committing to balance people, planet and profit. Financially, Habito completed a £35M Series C comprising an earlier Series C equity raise and a subsequent Series C extension via a convertible loan note, bringing total capital raised to just over £63M since launching in 2016. Habito is a London startup that offers an app and website to bring the entire mortgage process online as a free digital mortgage broker. Its technology analyzes over 11,000 mortgage products across 70 lenders in real time to match borrowers to suitable mortgages and lets users complete applications through the Habito platform. Once users sign up, Habito continuously monitors the market and alerts customers when a better deal appears, aiming to simplify switching and reduce overspend. The company says 1 in 4 British homeowners are mismatched and overpay by around £4,000 per year, a key market opportunity for its proposition. Habito plans to expand its offering to include home and life insurance and to integrate its technology with major retail banks and high street lenders to enable “real-time mortgage approvals.” The startup was founded by Daniel Hegarty and positions its product to reduce friction and fees compared with traditional brokers. habito is a London, UK-based digital mortgage broker led by founder and CEO Daniel Hegarty. Its platform gives customers access to over 60 lenders in real time and enables them to complete the entire mortgage application online. Launched in April 2016, the platform has been used by more than 20,000 people and has completed £50 million in mortgage applications. The company intends to use new funding to enhance the technology behind its service and further develop its machine learning capabilities over the next 12 months. Planned developments include adding real-time mortgage approvals and automatic alerts when a better mortgage deal becomes available to registered customers. Investors in the company include Mosaic Ventures, Transferwise CEO Taavet Hinrikus, Funding Circle founder Samir Desai, and Yuri Milner. Habito is a London startup that positions itself as the U.K.'s first digital mortgage broker and offers a fully automated brokering service. Its proprietary technology analyzes over 15,000 mortgage products across 100 lenders in seconds to identify the best deal for each applicant. Customers can apply online from phone, tablet or desktop in under 30 minutes. The platform uses machine learning to track eligibility criteria, interest rates, affordability and product features so it can make data-driven decisions and spot emerging patterns. Habito offers its brokerage service free to consumers and is paid by lenders via a commission that is a fraction of a percent of the mortgage. To help launch the service, the company raised just over £1.5 million in seed funding.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2016

Smava operates an online credit comparison platform that aggregates about 70 loan products ranging from €1,000 to €120,000 from over 20 banks and lending partners. Consumers select a loan on the platform and take it out directly; on average Smava borrowers pay roughly 35% less interest than the German national average. The company reported strong brokered loan volume growth, increasing about 35% from ~€2.0B in 2018 to ~€2.7B in 2019, with growth accelerating in Q1 2020. Founded in 2007 and based in Berlin, Smava has raised multiple funding rounds, most recently a €65M Series D over two years ago. Management says the new financing will be used to continue investments in digitalization and product innovations and to maintain growth through the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. CEO and co-founder Alexander Artopé emphasized the package’s role in sustaining the company’s growth course despite the crisis. Smava operates an online marketplace/portal that matches consumers to loan offers using big-data credit analytics and algorithms, typically presenting about 70 offers drawn from roughly 25 banks and private lenders. The company began in 2007 as a peer-to-peer lending platform but shifted to include banks as the primary funding source; P2P now represents less than five percent of loans. Smava says its matching and automation cut average wait times from 10 days to 10 minutes and deliver average savings of about €2,000 for borrowers, while approval rates on the platform rise to roughly 80–85 percent versus about 50 percent through banks directly. Operational scale cited in the article includes about 300,000 customers, €1.2 billion in loans transacted this year and about €3 billion over the company’s lifetime. Smava has been profitable for the last year and takes around four percent from its loans, which the article estimates would imply roughly €48 million in revenues from those products. The company plans to expand beyond Germany across Europe and pursue partnerships with e-commerce platforms (for example, powering financing for eBay’s car portal in Germany). smava operates an online lending marketplace that offers bank-branded and funded third-party loans as well as peer-to-peer loans ranging from €1,000 to €120,000. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Alexander Artopé and is based in Berlin, Germany. smava has originated more than $1.75 billion in loans through its platform and employs over 180 people. The firm plans to use the new capital to expand its customer base, hire additional talent and continue enhancing its scoring technology. The product mix includes both bank-funded products and loans funded by private individuals, positioning smava across multiple lending channels. The company emphasizes technology-driven credit scoring as a core part of its offering. Smava is a German peer-to-peer lending platform that matches investors with borrowers for online loans. The company uses automated algorithms and scoring technology to vet and approve loan candidates, enabling lower interest rates for users. Smava reports it has loaned out $600 million through its platform and that loan originations grew by 100% in the last year. The fresh capital is intended to accelerate business growth, advance its scoring technology, hire talent, and further fuel expansion. Management says the aim is to offer fully automated loans to borrowers at the best rates in the near future. Smava competes with other online lenders such as Auxmoney, Zopa and Lending Club. Smava is a Berlin-based social lending marketplace operating a Zopa-style peer lending platform. It generates revenue by collecting a one-time 1% fee on funded loans from borrowers; lenders use the service cost-free. The company has originated roughly €4 million in loans to date. Smava closed a second financing round of €4 million with venture capital firms Earlybird and Hamburg-based Neuhaus Partners. Earlybird was an investor in the first round and Neuhaus Partners joined in this second round. The article notes that social lending marketplaces have proven viable outside the UK and US and suggests significant potential for the model in Germany, where traditional credit is less prevalent and social support is culturally ingrained.