Community Update #3
Dear community.
Welcome to our third community update. It has been a while since the first two updates and quite a few things have happened. In a nut shell we have made huge progress on all fronts since the MVP and are now launching the actual protocol on Ethereum mainnet with institutional funding support from NewForm Capital and our launching customer and partner Caple.
Caple's SME working capital product
Together with Caple we are launching a novel, ESG compliant, SME working capital funding product that we believe is very befitting of the Florence Finance ethos and will play an important part in addressing the credit needs of SME's in these volatile and inflationary times whilst providing attractive yield to our funding base. Caple has a long and successful track record in launching new credit products in the northern European markets and has originated in excess of 300m in SME loans over the past couple of years, mainly for legacy financial institutions such as BNP Paribas but also for their own account. Michael Slinkert, the CEO of Caple has been supportive of the Florence Finance mission from the first time we told him our story and we are extremely happy to be able to partner with such an experienced and highly regarded player in the SME credit space.
The Protocol
The team has been working hard to improve on the MVP that we showcased late last year, mainly in order to facilitate 3rd party liquidity provision in due course. This required some pretty serious re-design of the protocol and its functions but now that it is complete we are ready to test it on mainnet in a "closed" setting (i.e. only whitelisted parties can interact with the protocol, to begin with). Once we are satisfied that all is working according to plan we will enable the 3rd party liquidity functionality and we should be ready to be the alternate source of SME funding that Florence Finance set out to be. Lots of things will need to be addressed before we get there and we will hopefully be signing up more borrowers and funders in the interim, but the road ahead is now all clear.
Marketing
Given the protocol is still somewhat closed for 3rd parties we will not be ramping up our marketing activities just yet but we will be communicating proactively with users that have the knowledge and interest in DeFi and real-world lending in order to get feedback on our MVP launch. Make sure to follow our channels for further details on this and everything else:
