Today we have encountered, Lode Hendrikx – the CEO of Helvetia Finvest B.V. – a financial services company founded in 2019 whose focus is on alternative financing solutions.
How did you start being interested in securitization?
In 2012, I was in Luxembourg with my partner planning to buy optical shops in Germany, but our collateral was in Luxembourg. Our target was family businesses. We asked both banks in Luxembourg and Germany for a credit line for our project. However both the banks in Luxembourg and Germany did not provide a positive answer. It was then that I bumped into an article about securitization. I realised that could have been a promising way to finance our projects. And not just ours, but also the ones of other small and medium enterprises.
Did you mange to do so?
When I was pursuing my project I was told that a cap of 5 million was a too little sum and that they would consider only sums from 100.000 million up. That is how I have understood that there are a lot of people who can be funded through securitization in the category of small/medium businesses.
Is this how you found Helvetia Finvest B.V.?
I started to work as a freelancer for the big 4 of securitization. What I noticed is that I needed to fill a gap. Normally, all the big players in these fields do not do small and medium caps, but only big caps. Founding Helvetia for me meant to bring the costs down for the small and medium companies clients. Basically, what I am doing now is simple plain old finance opening it up to small and medium enterprises. Our focus is on small and mid cap up to 500 million of euro.
For what I understand you are working on something really niche…
Well, at the moment I would say there are not many private institutions that I know of – in The Netherlands or Europe – that carry out the financial services that we provide. We do something very specific, but there is for sure a greater potential to disclose for this type of market.
For more information about Helvetia Finvest B.V. and its services please visit our website.
