Financial services isn’t always a sector that tugs on heartstrings. The story of Anyfin, though, is one that hits home for many.

The Anyfin founders, Mikael Hussain, Filip Polhem, and Sven Perkmann, spent years on the frontlines at Klarna and iZettle. They witnessed how valuable financial services can be, but also how unfair the system is for millions of hardworking people. Hardworking people who, as they passionately pointed out when we met in their office in central Stockholm, don’t have free soda at work, wear designer clothes, or get discounts on their mortgages, but who do pay their bills on time.

It wasn’t fair.

At the same time the founders saw a wave of fintech players going after the wallets: providing debit cards, wealth management, and flashy current accounts. However, they knew that when it comes to personal finance, the money isn’t even in the wallet: 70% of retail banking revenues come from loans.

So they founded Anyfin, with the mission to put financial power into the hands of all consumers, — frankly to save them from getting ripped off. The plan was to empower consumers with knowledge and fairly priced services, and they started by following the money: to one of the biggest devils in household budgets, which is of course interest rates.

Interest rates, especially those on unsecured loans such as credit offered by retail outlets, or sms and payday loans, are infamous for being aggressively priced; think 15% - 25% 😵 even in today’s ultra-low-interest environment. This often comes from borrowers having limited optionality due to cash flow constraints. With average household savings rates ranging from 5–10% across Europe, big ticket items like a family vacation, or an unexpected repair, mean liquidity is a real, and incredibly stressful, problem for many — even when there’s an underlying ability to pay. Lenders have charged these rates because they can. And have taken advantage of consumers for decades.

Increasingly these rates are showing up when consumers succumb to ruthless “buy now pay later” marketing tactics, where the actual interest costs aren’t made clear, and where consumers are urged to buy more, and take on debt. To make matters worse, lenders haven’t exactly kept up with technology that enables modern credit scoring, meaning they don’t always accurately assess risk, let alone do so on an individual level. Therefore, high and low risk customers often end up in the same bucket, and customers get overcharged.

So on the mission to make finance more fair, Anyfin’s first service was a refinancing product, refinancing consumers’ existing loans. Today, Anyfin has helped thousands of households in the Nordics reduce their interest rates by an average (❗️) of 64%, translating to millions of Euros in savings; cash that’s now in the wallets of those who could use it the most.

How do they do this? Using modern tech, data from existing loans, and public information, Anyfin’s credit scoring engine is often more efficient than most banks, meaning Anyfin can offer a more accurate (read: often lower) rate to borrowers. Having efficient operations also means customers don’t need to finance incumbent cost structures. For families who use credit to buy winter clothes for their kids, or to pay their car repairs, even these extra savings can go a long way.

What’s next? Having earned consumers’ trust by helping with something as personal as monthly bills, Anyfin plans to add many more services to the lineup. Since the need for financial wellbeing is borderless, and the need is only amplified in today’s uncertain economy, Anyfin is also planning further international expansion. The team’s experiences, including rolling out three of Sweden’s unicorns — Spotify, iZettle, and Klarna, will be invaluable assets.

Why did we invest? We VCs look for big and painful problems like these, and we look to teams with this passion and experience to solve them. We at EQT Ventures are convinced, too, that missions like this with positive societal impacts at their core have the potential to mean the most. So with heartstrings tugged, it was a no-brainer. We are humbled and thrilled to join the journey and look forward to supporting the whole team along the way.

The $30 million Series B round was led by EQT Ventures, with existing investors Accel, Northzone, Global Founders Capital and FinTech Collective participating.