How Qred started

The story of Qred

In 2015, my business partners and I decided to change the age-old industry of lending, and more specifically loans to small businesses. Traditionally, the smallest businesses have been underfunded by traditional banks.

Speaking from experience, we have been in the same situation that hundreds of small businesses face every day. Let me tell you a short story: once upon a time there was a relatively young and aspiring entrepreneur, let's call him Emil, who wanted to start his own business. There was much to learn and much that was new, exciting and unknown. One of the first things Emil had to do was go to a bank to open a bank account for his business. After a 15-minute conversation in which he told the banker in a nice suit about his business plans, the entrepreneur was told that the bank did not think the business idea was well thought out and that, unfortunately, he could not become a customer of the bank. Fortunately, the entrepreneur did not give up and after a while managed to find a bank that did accept his newly established business as a customer.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare situation. It often happens that small business owners are not taken seriously, or are not given time, advice and fair financing.

This is why in 2015 we decided to start Qred: to make financing easier and more accessible to entrepreneurs. It's only fair, considering that 4 out of 5 new jobs are created by small business owners and that the future prosperity of countries depends largely on whether we create new and ambitious businesses.

Today, Qred operates in as many as six markets, is one of the fastest growing fintech companies in Sweden and has been included in the Financial Times list of fastest growing companies in Europe four years in a row. In addition, Qred is the largest financier of small businesses in Scandinavia and, as of October 2023, we are also one of Europe's newest banks.

We are now striving to become the number one bank for small businesses in Europe. We want all businesses to get the treatment and respect they need and most importantly deserve. Using machine learning and AI, we can make a thorough and adequate credit assessment within seconds, and with our integrations with other platforms, we can disburse loans within minutes.

To date, we have financed more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and helped create more than 50,000 jobs over the years. Our goal is to finance the millions of severely underbanked entrepreneurs across Europe and to make traditional banks a little bit more humble.

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Emil Sunvisson, CEO and co-founder