The fintech company Factris has just received a grant of 1,4MM from the EU to fund the development of an automated risk-management system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The total project amount is 1,95MM. This new system will solve an enormous problem that affects small businesses across Europe.

This problem has to do with risk. When a business factors their unpaid invoice, they sell it to a factoring company for a fee that provides them with quick capital. However—as is the case with all financing—funding that business involves risk. This risk has been tediously assessed by humans up until now, who only had partial amounts of data to use in reviewing each applicant’s unique, complex situation. Thus, evaluating factoring cases is both expensive and incomplete for many financiers. As a result, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are seen as too risky and are denied much-needed financing.

However, Factris will soon make this problem a thing of the past.

Thanks to the EU grant, Factris will develop a risk-management platform that uses the power of AI to evaluate risk automatically—an industry first. By using AI to automate data collection and analysis almost instantly, Factris will have the power to understand and score the risk of each factoring case clearly. This AI-powered automated analysis—along with the ability to constantly monitor risk—will completely solve the problem of having a limited, incomplete picture of factoring risks from human analysis and will extend factoring to countless SMEs across Europe.

Factris is already a proven financial leader through technological innovations, such as their Finance Automation for Business platform, or “FAB”, which automates tasks for employees to focus on personalised customer care. This new AI-powered system will provide Factris with a far-greater competitive edge by both slashing the cost of factoring to customers and speeding up the factoring process exponentially.

Factris’ CEO Brian Reaves comments, “Since day one, Factris has been dedicated to improving how small businesses are financed by using technology. This grant will allow Factris to fund SMEs like no one else.”