Mexican venture capital fund IGNIA lead a new undisclosed investment round in fintech platform Visor. ALLVP and American Express Ventures also participated in the round.
(Press Release) Mexico City, March 15, 2018 – Visor (visor.io) (visoradl.com), the state-of-the-art fintech platform for delivering financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), announced today that a group of venture capital funds, including lead investor IGNIA and co-investors American Express Ventures and ALLVP, are participating in a fundraising round, which will help the company expand its platform.
Visor operates a scalable digital platform that provides financial institutions with reliable, dynamic information about the financial health of SMEs, enabling lenders to make more informed lending decisions and underwrite prospective borrowers they might have previously turned down for financing. Visor’s platform uses proprietary credit and sales algorithms to build SME profiles based on data compiled automatically from sources including Sistema de Administracion Tributaria (SAT), the federal tax agency of Mexico; financial statements and other sources. The platform benefits multiple parties by:
Reducing loan-origination costs and enabling more effective cross-selling for lenders.
Delivering valuable insights to corporate clients about SMEs’ supplier and distributor relationships, which can help corporates create their own financing options and payment plans for their SME partners.
Providing more affordable financing options to SMEs that may have previously struggled to obtain loans due to a lack of a traditional credit history.
Visor’s platform also provides SMEs with business and financing recommendations, as well as tools to help them strengthen and grow their business.
Founded in November 2015, Visor is headquartered in Mexico City and also has an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“It fills us with enthusiasm and a great sense of responsibility to have received a vote of confidence from investors as savvy as IGNIA, Amex Ventures and ALLVP. It tells us that they believe we will succeed in our mission to contribute via our platform, to develop our economy by helping SMEs access financing, grow their business with large corporations and manage themselves better,” said Ruben Sanchez Souza, CEO of Visor ADL.
“The innovative technology developed by Visor makes it very easy to use for SMEs, large companies and financial institutions. We are very proud to partner with this team and to work together on improving access to credit to SMEs. More access to credit will help grow the thousands of financially healthy SMEs that constitute the main driver for our economies in Latin America,” said Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of IGNIA.
“Visor’s platform provides lenders with a fuller picture of a prospective business borrower’s financial health, giving SMEs more opportunities to secure credit and lenders greater ability to expand their customer base,” said Harshul Sanghi, Managing Partner of Amex Ventures, the strategic investment arm of American Express. “We are excited to support Visor in its mission as it helps SMEs in Mexico overcome some of the biggest challenges they face obtaining affordable financing.”
“Closing the SME credit penetration gap in Mexico is one of the largest venture opportunities in Latin America. Distinctively passionate and experienced co-founders, Ruben Sanchez Souza, Jean-Bernard Rolland and Francisco Álvarez have created a unique technology that can potentially solve this problem,” explains Federico Antoni, Managing Partner at ALLVP.
