Cordada , a Latam-based private debt platform catering to lenders and fintechs that serve SMEs, has partnered with Thought Machine to close the funding gap for SMEs in Latin America. With this partnership, Cordada will make use of Thought Machine's cloud-native core banking platform, known as Vault Core.

This integration is intended to develop personalised financial products for SME lenders and fintechs across the Latin American region. Moreover, Cordada will use Vault Core as SaaS hosted on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). An aspect of this integration involves migrating Cordada’s existing products and services onto Vault Core and leveraging the technology to design, test, and deliver high-quality financial products. This is expected to help lenders of various sizes to fund the growth of the next generation of SMEs.

Cordada currently operates in Chile, Peru as well as Mexico, and with the use of Vault Core, the company is expected to be able to expand its reach and services into new Latin American markets. Cordada selected Vault Core to support its customer base with a comprehensive suite of lending solutions, based on dynamic and personalised credits secured with portfolio collateral. With the use of Vault Core, Cordada can create financial products by tapping into Thought Machine’s global Product Library, which contains a collection of pre-built smart contracts ready for launch. If necessary, Cordada has the ability to customise these products before launch or modify them.

This feature enables Cordada to offer its customer base tailored and localised financial products while also accommodating multi-currency assets. Latin American SMEs turn to fintechs to bridge funding gap A recent study shows that fintechs in Latin America are playing a crucial role in bridging the funding gap for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, aiding these companies in withstanding the economic impacts brought on by the global pandemic. The study further highlights that prior to successfully receiving funding from a fintech platform, MSMEs had sought to raise funds through various sources, such as banks or family and friends.

Although many of them had looked for funding from banks, approximately only half had received and accepted an offer. Additionally, MSMEs expressed that the decision to raise funds through fintechs was influenced by the ability to receive the funds faster and with a better standard of customer service. According to half of the MSMEs respondents in the study, the choice of fintech funding was also largely determined by the availability of better interest rates than traditional or other funding options. This study well illustrates the importance of fintechs in narrowing the MSME funding gap and driving growth across the Latin American region. More about Cordada and Thought Machine Founded in 2019, Cordada was created to support the thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in Latin America that rely on the ecosystem of fintechs and local lenders to fuel their growth.

Cordada aims to empower SME lenders and provide relevant, scalable financing to their clients. Founded in 2014, Thought Machine aims to create technology that can run the world’s banks according to the designs and software practices of the modern age. The company now operates in Europe, Asia, North America, Australasia as well as the Middle East.

In 2022, Thought Machine completed a Series D funding round, raising the valuation of the company to USD 2.7 billion. Thought Machine’s current client list includes Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, M1, and Arvest Bank, among others around the world. .