PRESS RELEASE

Varengold Bank and HandEX announce collaboration to optimise export financing for small and medium-sized enterprises

Good news for small and medium-sized enterprises: An online platform now makes financing solutions, such as forfaiting and buyer's credit, available to exporters and importers in a fast and customer-friendly manner. Euler Hermes AG processes the related export credit guarantees on behalf of the German Federal Government.

• In line with the market: The focus is on order values between EUR 100,000 and EUR 5 million.
• Fast: Financing processes are fully digitalised.
• Customer-friendly: The HandEX online platform enables export financing applications to be submitted with minimal effort.

Hamburg, 26/09/2019 - With a market share of around EUR 220 billion, small and medium-sized enterprises are responsible for approximately one fifth of German foreign trade. Although imports and exports keep reaching record highs, large banks refuse about every second request for financing on the grounds that they are too small and too costly to process. This makes it increasingly difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises to meet potential orders. The solution is called HandEX, an online credit platform for export financing from EUR 100,000 to EUR 5 million launched at the beginning of 2019.

"We have identified an attractive niche market, developed streamlined processes and made sure that all of the information which is relevant to a decision-making process can be incorporated directly into our platform", says Vincent Lauer, founder and CEO of HandEX GmbH. "We want to help small and medium-sized enterprises hold their own when competing globally. Our partnership with Varengold Bank will allow us to expand our business operations even faster", adds Lauer. Financial inclusion is a further mission of HandEX. With this in mind, HandEX also offers its services to importers based in emerging markets. "We attended the Intersolar conference in Mexico recently and we received some really positive feedback about our platform," explains Lauer in reference to the problem that exports from Germany sometimes flounder because credit-checking importers is too costly. The platform makes exchanging information a great deal easier.

For Varengold Bank, the partnership is a further step towards establishing itself as the preferred banking partner for FinTechs. "HandEX has presented us with a new, innovative solution to an age-old problem," says Frank Otten, Member of the Executive Board of Varengold Bank AG. "Export financing is an essential parameter for companies looking to scale their business model to international markets. Thanks to the products offered by HandEX, this will become much easier, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises."

Sources: Institut für Mittelstandsforschung Bonn https://en.ifm-bonn.org/statistics/#accordion=1&tab=0