Raize

José Rego is Raize's founder and Chief Executive Officer, overseeing the firm's credit strategy, technology roadmap, and regulatory relationships. The credit-underwriting process uses an internally developed scoring model that ingests real-time SME financial data through accounting-software integrations rather than relying solely on traditional credit-bureau inputs. The underwriting team functions within the Lisbon headquarters under Rego's direct leadership.

Raize began as a peer-to-peer lending marketplace in 2015, matching retail and institutional funders with micro-enterprise borrowers. In 2019, it secured a payment-institution license from the Bank of Portugal, which transformed its operating model — the firm now issues its own revolving credit facilities directly to borrowers rather than acting purely as a broker. This makes it structurally closer to a non-bank lender than a classic P2P platform.

Raize provides short-duration revolving overdraft credit lines to enterprises with fewer than ten employees — a segment that constitutes over 95% of Portugal's businesses. The credit facility is designed as an always-available working-capital tool, not a term loan. Average maturities run under twelve months, and drawdowns are instantaneous via a direct integration with Portugal's Multibanco network.

Raize funds its loan book through a combination of retail investors from its original P2P marketplace and institutional capital. On the origination side, it acquires borrowers through direct online marketing and distribution partnerships with accounting-software providers, which supply the real-time financial data that feeds its proprietary credit-scoring model. A 2021 capital raise of €4.5 million (per Jornal de Negócios, 2021) was earmarked partly to expand institutional funding channels.

Raize does not publicly report its current loan-book size or total assets under management. The firm disclosed cumulative origination of over €50 million as of early 2021 (per ECO, 2021), but has not provided a more recent aggregate number. Its regulated status as a payment institution requires periodic reporting to the Bank of Portugal, though that data is not routinely published.

Raize's credit exposure is concentrated at the micro-enterprise end of the Portuguese market — firms with fewer than ten employees that large banks find structurally too small to underwrite profitably. The firm's short-duration, high-velocity working-capital focus, combined with real-time data ingestion from accounting software, produces a loan book that differs from bank SME portfolios in both tenor and underwriting methodology. The portfolio is granular across thousands of borrowers, and the average facility size per enterprise is among the smallest in Portuguese non-bank lending.

No. Raize is an independent financial-technology firm incorporated as a Portuguese payment institution, not a family office or family-backed investment vehicle. Its founding team, led by José Rego, built the company from the P2P-lending movement's early wave in Southern Europe, and its investor base includes venture-style backers rather than a single-family source of capital.