Trade Ledger, the data-driven lending technology provider has joined forces with Validis, the embedded platform for on-demand access to SME financial data, to tackle the growing SME funding gap, estimated to be nearing US$10 trillion.  The goal of the strategic partnership is to give lenders a cost-efficient, easy to implement and scalable end-to-end credit orchestration solution, eliminating historically time-consuming and high-cost processes for complex products like invoice finance. By purposefully targeting large systemic trade banks, the combined proposition should help billions of new capital to flow more freely into the global economy.

Trade Ledger is a LendTech provider for next-generation working capital, enabling lenders to deliver simple, intuitive, and sustainable lending journeys through the use of SaaS technology, new digital datasets and advanced risk decisioning. Validis extracts and fully standardises financial data directly from SMEs accounting packages, delivering significant operating and cost efficiencies. On-demand insights from over 100+ financial metrics – which are seamlessly ingested and presented in the Trade Ledger platform – will allow lenders to understand their business customers in order to provide timely products, make high value decisions at pace and significantly reduce their cost to serve.

Through the new partnership, lenders will be able to launch, embed and scale modern digital working capital products with a 60%+ reduction in operating costs and in as little as 12 weeks. This will enable them to onboard new customers in a matter of hours and provide real-time access to funds, in contrast with the industry average of a 90-day wait for cash.

The quality of Validis data gives lenders on the Trade Ledger platform the ability to personalise working capital products at scale, without introducing any additional risk.  Technology from both Validis and Trade Ledger is API-driven, providing the ‘plumbing’ for standardised data to flow freely. This real-time access to customer data enables value to be delivered at every stage of the credit lifecycle, enabling lenders to automatically adjust the availability of funds during periods of growth or downturn.

“Lending to SMEs and mid-cap businesses is often too expensive and complex for lenders” explained Roger Vincent, Global VP of Sales at Trade Ledger. “Unlocking new target operating models in this segment cannot be achieved by a single vendor, but rather an ecosystem of innovative tech partners like Trade Ledger and Validis.

“APIs and new data sources are going to precipitate a change in every bank's business model by 2030. Today there is much more data available than when these organisations first built the systems they are now updating, and much of this valuable data is available in real-time. Risk assessments can now be vastly more sophisticated, enabling faster lending in a much wider set of circumstances.”

Andrew Sanaghan, Chief Operating Officer & Head of Financial Services, Validis added: “At Validis we believe in a plug and play approach that allows SMEs to seamlessly connect their data into the digital ecosystem, enabling them to get access to better products and services.

“By partnering with Trade Ledger, we’re providing banks and their customers with a single, unified experience that is also giving them a competitive edge. By bringing together the best components to deliver new technology capabilities the partnership dramatically reduces lenders’ time to decision and time to get funds into customers’ accounts. With the current economic pressures, this alone is crucial for business owners.”