Alexander Artopé is the co-founder and CEO at smava, an online loan marketplace. Customers can compare and take loan offers via smava. A typical customer in Germany would lend money for buying a new car or furniture when moving into a new apartment, explains Artopé.
Founded in 2006, the company almost doubled it’s loan volume from more than €1bn to over €2bn. In general online is significantly outgrowing offline in the overall loan market, describes Artopé the market situation. Non-banks already generate every second loan and the high lender fragmentation enables the strong market position for smava.
The young company very „aggressively“ tries to get their brand known by the public. This is done via tv commercials and a marketing campaign where they offer a negative interest rate to their customers. In doing so, the company also made it to the front page of the BILD Germany’s biggest newspaper.
Currently smava is discussing the opportunites of an IPO (as already mentioned in the press).
Watch full video...