2021
Annual Report
Part 1 - Annual review
Prolog 04
Multitude’s values 06
Remarks from the CEO 08
Meeting: Multitude - The FinTech pioneer 14
Why investors trust Multitude 16
SweepBank Tribe 18
Ferratum Tribe 24
CapitalBox Tribe 30
ESG report 2021 36
Meeting our people 82
Information for shareholders 92
Legal and regulatory environment 100
Part 2 - Financial review
Board of directors report (unaudited) 106
Financial highlights 108
Key developments and process in 2021 112
Shares of company 119
Group consolidated financial statements (audited) 124
Multitude SE standalone financial statements (audited) 182
Contents
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Prolog
The state of being many
F
rom the origins of being only Ferratum as a consumer lender, the Group has evolved into a
fully regulated financial platform. In 2021, the foundation of the next, advanced era of business
was laid – to be more precise, of businesses. To portray and serve what the Group has become
and wants to reach, it was rebranded and transformed into Multitude Group. The name Multitude
emphasises the broadness of reach, potential, and positive impact on the financial world – the
state of being many.
Multitude has three independent business units on its growth platform: Ferratum as a con-
sumer lender, CapitalBox as a business lender, and SweepBank as a financing and shopping app.
Through 16+ years in purely digital financial technology, Multitude can support and enable the
success of these, and more, next generation of financial businesses through scalable operations.
This report reveals more about this change, its reasons, and the opportunities it brings. In
2021, we took substantial steps toward our vision of becoming the most valued financial ecosys-
tem. The learnings from our past have been utilized to build the strongest today. Supported by the
past, and guided by the future.
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The Multitude Group
• Brings a solid foundation of expertise and operations into new
financial service offerings.
• Enables growth and scale for the business units on its platform.
• Creates synergies for added value, increased customer satisfaction,
and higher earnings for its independent business units.
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Multitude’s
values
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Customer centricity
Our customers are at the heart of what we do, why we exist, whom we first serve, and serving
them is why we have a right to be in the market. In everything we do, we want to create solutions
that are made by thinking as if we were looking at them through the customers’ eyes and are
striving to give them the best possible customer experience.
Entrepreneurial spirit
We embrace the entrepreneurial spirit that has guided us since the beginning and that our
employees cherish so much with us. We are curious to learn new things, innovative in finding
solutions, move fast, stay agile, have low hierarchies, avoid unnecessary bureaucracy, and think
about spending money as if it was coming out of our own pocket.
Candour
We communicate openly, transparently, and honestly with each other and all our stakeholders
and do so with respect. We make no excuses and are straightforward in what we do and what we
say. We are realistic with our planning and speak up when we see issues or risks.
Respect
It is about how we feel about others and how we treat them. We respect our customers, both
internal and external, our colleagues, our partners, our investors, and all our other stakeholders
evenly in all our actions and communications. This respect is also shown by taking accountability
for our actions in a wider social context, taking care of mother nature’s limited resources and
conducting our business in a sustainable manner.
Winning teams
We can only achieve the highest outcomes by working together in winning teams. In these
teams, we support each other, stand up for each other and can make mistakes without being
judged, but we also together learn from them. We have each other’s back, and like a family across
teams, we stick together, fight together, and when we achieve our goals, we celebrate together.
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Remarks
from the CEO
Dear Shareholders,
T
he past year was one of transformation for us – a transformation onto the next stage of
financial disruption. We successfully implemented our new, agile way of working across the
whole Group, executed our new business strategy that has led us onto a new growth path, and
rebranded the Group from Ferratum to Multitude.
As many times before during our 16+ years of history, in 2021, our resilience was tested. This
time it was the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I am proud to state and show that our ability as
a team to adapt, evolve and transform successfully was evident. This is shown by each of our
business units growing profitably again. We are also proud that we could stand by our customers
in these challenging times. The thank you for these achievements must go to our fantastic team
across the globe, and naturally also to our customers, stakeholders and investors.
Experience and data of 16 years as rocket fuel to true disruption
Last year, I wrote about how we believe that true disruption in finance is yet to come and that
such disruption across industries has only ever been achieved through scalable platforms. This, is
what we have built this year.
To explain how we got to this point and show how every step of our 16-year journey has led
us to a pole position in the race of disrupting finance as an industry, allow me to describe our
evolution briefly. We have evolved from our roots in pure consumer lending into a growth platform
that caters and nurtures a wider variety of financial services. Ferratum as a brand is still with us,
now solely used by our oldest business unit, consumer lending. In addition, we have CapitalBox
as a business lender, and SweepBank as a shopping and financing app. As independent units,
each can serve and execute on their own unique customer promise and experience. All of these
independent business units, and in the future more, gain in scale and from strong tailwind by
utilising the foundational skills, experience, and know-how in providing digital financial services
that we have built over more than 16 years.
S
weepBank has already moved into monetisation phase and strongly benefits from the growing
trend of online shopping. We have reached impressive unit-level profitability, even though
the overall EBIT was negative due to investing in the brand and the development of the app.
Our approach to mobile banking is proven to be unique, as SweepBank has already given us a
revolutionary ARPU (average revenue per user) in the industry. Our ARPU in 2021 was at EUR
187.5, which is as much as ten times higher than most of the neo banks in Europe. SweepBank is
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also different by being a mobile bank with a freemium credit card to finance shorter-term needs.
Customers have praised the credit card, and our app reached the top position in app stores in
Finland after the launch. Now, we are ready to launch the card in Germany in 2022. In addition,
SweepBank offers Prime Loans for larger purchases. Overall, revenues nearly tripled in the past
year, reaching EUR 9.0 million in 2021, and we expect the growth to stay strong also going forward.
We are excited to see that CapitalBox has found its growth mode in loan sales again and
is already one of the the leading players in its field as a digital business lender in the markets it
operates in. Paired with tailwind for sales through a post-COVID-19 boost in the economy, new
services, such as Purchase Finance that was launched in Finland 2021, and the launch of the
Credit Line in Sweden, give additional opportunities for growth through further roll-outs in 2022.
Improvements in our automated decision process, and the simplification of the customer process
as a whole, have already shown increased customer satisfaction and loan sales. In 2021, CapitalBox
recorded revenues of EUR 22.0 million. Net AR was at EUR 75.4 million, with loan sales having
increased strongest in Q4.
Last but certainly not least, Ferratum achieved great results with three consecutive quarters
of revenue growth and strong profitability again. It is important to note that even though this
business unit is our oldest, it is still growing in our focus markets, and we plan to expand it further. I
am also proud that even after all these years, Ferratum continues to satisfy its customers, showing
a whopping 94% customer satisfaction score.
The changes in our brands have brought more clarity into customer communication and
allowed us to become more precise in our customer promises. Our new strategy and operations
have resulted in a solid position against the competition.
Strong turnaround
As Multitude, we have shown a revenue turnaround since Q2 2021, recording average growth of
1.8% towards Q4 2021. Yearly revenue decreased from EUR 231 million in 2020 to EUR 214 million
in 2021. The overall lending portfolio across all business units has grown from EUR 361 million to
EUR 444 million, translating to 23.0% growth year on year. The stronger revenue growth over the
loan portfolio proves our cost scalability.
We improved payment behaviour and decreased our impairment losses over net accounts
receivable to 16.2%, compared to 25.2% in 2020. We improved our asset quality and have a strong
cash and equity position at EUR 302 million and EUR 170 million respectively. Our consolidated
interest-bearing debt, excluding customer deposits stood at EUR 145 million at the end of the year.
A perpetual bond issue in Q4 allows us increased flexibility in financial planning. In addition, our
cost of debt capital has been reduced to a five-year low and stands at 1,76% at the end of the year
2021, excluding the perpetual bond.
Across all independent business units within Multitude - or as we call them, tribes - we have
successfully implemented our agile way of working that we laid the foundation for in 2020. This
new way of working has clarified responsibilities and internal ways of operating. It has allowed us
to serve our customers better and faster, and allowed us now to stand on the strongest foundation
for scalability so far.
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Jorma Jokela
Founder & CEO
Everything we do, we do to serve our customers. I am proud to state that in addition to the
higher-than-average satisfaction levels across our brands, a further proof point to our highest
level of customer experience is that contacts handled by our customer service agents decreased
by 31% in 2021 and that our chatbots can handle 71% of all enquiries without human involvement.
This means that our processes work well and that our customers get 24/7 omnichannel service
whenever they need it.
As a purely digital player from the beginning, we have always operated in an environmentally
sustainable manner. We will continue building on our achievements so far, and with our new ESG
strategy, metrics and framework, we want to have an even stronger ESG standing going forward.
The new framework has been approved by the Board and is built upon our purpose and mission
as the foundation – changing the world by making banking and finance accessible to everybody
and positively impacting society. Our mission as Multitude is to democratise financial services
through digitalization, making them fast, easy and green. Furthermore, the framework includes our
ESG goals on Group and tribe level, ESG values, the process and governance, and reporting and
engagement. We will build on further context and content throughout 2022 and beyond.
Ready for a new era of finance
In our first-ever annual report as a stock listed company in 2014, I stated that we want to offer
more than money to everyone; our promise to customers is that we provide simple, easy-to-use
product applications, fast, and transparent, confidential loan processes. I am extremely happy
that I can state we have done precisely that and beyond. With the historical year of 2021 as the
year of substantial transformation, we have built the strongest business foundation so far and are
ready for a new era of financial disruption. Even though we have transformed and will disrupt the
industry, our customer promise remains the same as we stated in 2014.
We, as Multitude, are committed to returning to profitable growth, projecting our EBIT to grow
by 50% p.a. in 2022-2024. We will continue driving organic, profitable growth and increasing the
level of automation in our business to allow even greater scale. In addition, we are exploring new
opportunities in terms of geographies, product partners, and M&A to accelerate further growth.
One might wonder, what it is that makes a company versatile and stable at the same time?
I believe it is our entrepreneurial spirit that allows us to fail and learn fast. It is that we have
been around for so long, that we have seen and navigated successfully through so many changes
together as a team already. This allows us an expedited ability to react to changes and find the
right solutions. It is a diverse team of exceptional talent. It is that we share one goal – the goal
of becoming the most valued financial ecosystem. This ecosystem is what we have been building
toward over all these years, and it is what we will accomplish.
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