Who is Instabank?
Instabank is a traditional consumer loan bank established in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany. Their products range from credit cards to conventional consumer loans and refinance expensive debts based on a mortgage.
Why is Instabank interesting for Lunar?
Instabank also opens a new market for Lunar: Finland has relatively many customers but relatively small loans. Norway, however, has the most customers and the most prominent lending volume (about 2,5 billion NOK)
Why is Instabank a strange choice?
Lunar markets itself as “Norway’s new bank” and uses the tagline: “With Lunar, getting control of your money has never been easier.” Buying a consumer loan bank doesn’t seem on brand: After all, 75% of Instabanks portfolio are consumer loans with high-interest rates.
Digging more into Instabank also shows that their IT department is more or less non-existent, indicating that most of their services are just bought directly from Bankqsoft. If this acquisition is a way to fill Lunar’s missing piece of the private market puzzle by supporting mortgage loans, it certainly is a strange use of money. With an existing banking license in Norway, I’m sure Lunar could launch their own mortgage solution faster than using time merging with another company and their current technology stack. Nontheless, it will be interesting to follow Lunar going forward!