Credit: Santander Invests in Bonify

Through their corporate venture fund Santander InnoVentures, the Spanish group announces they funded Bonify –a German recommendation app specialising in credit scoring and Personal Finance Management– allowing them to benefit from their visibility to expand their reach throughout Europe. This announcement stands out as Santander’s first investment in Germany.

The Berlin-based start-up Bonify was founded in 2015 to provide their users with real time assessments as to their creditworthiness and customised advice to help them improve their financial health. Their recommendations are sent in-app.

Bonify prompts its users to save money through switching to a different loan or energy provider, for example. It also predict when they should preferably rely on their overdraft option and provide them with customised suggestions.

Santander reaches out for another European market where they hope they will be able to roll out their services, while Bonify relies on a well-established international banking group to boost their alternative scoring methods globally by 2019.

Comments – Santander successfully bets on FinTechs

Over the past year, the Spanish group announced multiple investments in FinTechs whose business core involves credit services (PayJoy in Spain, Roostify in the US, for instance). The German start-up with 300,000 users Bonify is another addition to this list. They will benefit from Santander’s experience. This announcement stands out as Santander’s first investment in Germany, occurring as the FinTech just upgraded their analytics engine to optimise their recommendations. They issued more than 600,000 credit reports so far. The banking group also intends to enhance CRM procedures with a technology meant to improve customers’ financial health using smart data scoring methods.

Through their Venture Capital, Santander highlights their ambition to become an influential player in Germany and, over time, on an international level.