REX: Younited Credit Aims for International Expansion

The digital consumer lending company Younited Credit launched in Europe in May 2016 when Prêt d’Union rebranded to reach out for new countries. Since then, not all their goals have been achieved, but their ambitions have scaled up. This FinTech introduces a new partnership-based “Credit as a Service” model.

Younited Credit was first launched in France and later entered Italy and Spain. This internationalisation now accounts for 40% of their platform’s activity (in terms of credit production) beyond their initial home market.

After two years in Italy, this platform exceeded €100 million in outstanding credit (half of their objective by end-2018). They aim for further development in this country as they partnered with the online insurance company ConTe. This agreement gave birth to a new brand: ConTe prestiti, by Younited Credit. All of the insurer’s digital channels are exploited to offer personal loans ranging from €1,000 to €50,000, over 6 to 84 months. These loans can, for instance, be subscribed via phone call by ConTe agents if the insured person has to buy a new car as a result of accidental damage.

In Spain, this FinTech claims €32 million in credit for one year. Beyond these figures, Younited Credit is also setting new goals to secure their activity. They aim to become profitable on their currently addressed markets by 2019, and exceed one billion euros in credit within two to three months.

Comments – International strategic shift

Younited Credit materialised their European ambitions just one month after their change of name. They allowed French project holders to be granted funds from German savers, via a partnership with Raisin. This proved to be a winning bet since the platform claimed positive results in 2017. Younited Credit then started focusing on AI technologies to improve their decisioning process, and when on integrating a digital signing feature (adopted by 90% of their customers).

Younited Credit has been active on additional countries for two years already, and observes business development on markets which happened to be easier to address than France. Italy stood out as most profitable for the FinTech (higher limits applied on usury rates, and in place central consumer credit database for securing and refining scoring processes). Also, this FinTech undertook a strategic shift towards chat they refer to as “Credit as a Service”. Their partnership with ConTe stresses the part likely to be played by distribution partnerships, where Younited Credit operated in the back office to provide off-the-shelf credit products to these third party players. This model should help them speed up the pace of their development.