This post was originally published on The FinTech Times
Embedded finance company Froda has partnered with SpareBank 1 Østlandet, one of Norway’s largest banks serving over 433,000 customers. In what is being described as one of Europe’s first deployments of embedded SME lending through a bank-fintech collaboration, the bank will integrate Froda’s automated loan application directly into its existing customer journey.
The partnership targets a long-standing structural challenge in financial services: the €400billion SME financing gap across Europe. For decades, traditional banks have struggled with small-ticket lending because high operational costs and thin margins render these loans inefficient and uneconomical.
By integrating “Froda Embedded,” SpareBank 1 Østlandet aims to overcome these hurdles, reducing friction and manual steps to serve a broader segment of the SME market profitably.
Ecosystems over silos Christian Fjestad, EVP of technology and development at SpareBank 1 Østlandet
Combining the 180-year-old trust and scale of the Norwegian savings bank with Froda’s data-driven automation opens up previously hard-to-reach market segments. The integrated solution also leverages Froda’s existing partnership with Visa. By utilizing Visa Direct, the platform enables the instant disbursement of approved funds alongside automated repayments.
Christian Fjestad, executive vice president
— Read the rest of this post, which was originally published on The FinTech Times.
