NIBC Bank and Europe’s second most valuable fintech OakNorth have signed a five-year commercial deal to use the UK-based lender’s credit decisioning platform. The partnership comes after a pilot implementation of the platform. In the deal, much of NIBC’s corporate loan book will be onboarded to the platform.

In addition to using the bank’s credit decisioning platform, NIBC Bank will also have the benefit of OakNorth’s council. OakNorth will help NIBC find new ways to expand its SME lending activities.

Paulus de Wilt, CEO of NIBC Bank, noted that the partnership began with OakNorth making a minority investment in 2018. He went on to further say that his bank will, “be able to leverage the OakNorth platform to enhance efficiency in the credit monitoring process with richer data, thus enabling us to even better serve our mid-market clients on their decisive moments”. The partnership will also buttress NIBC’s tech-based approach to banking.

Rishi Khosla, co-founder of OakNorth, called NIBC a “committed partner” who share their goal of tackling SME lending.