Fencia: building value in complex markets

In the digital ecosystem, always dominated by urgency, the need for rapid growth and the obsession with standing out, new companies are born every week promising to revolutionize a sector of the economy. Disruption lurks around every corner, multimillion funding rounds follow one another, optimistic press releases fly and vanity metrics flourish. Some would say that if a tech-based company doesn’t announce it has raised millions, it doesn’t exist.

But there are other ways of doing things. Other ways of understanding technological development, business value and growth. One that doesn’t need to chase headlines and is built on solid models, deep knowledge of the sector it operates in and the will to find sensible solutions to complex problems.

Useful technology, not just visible technology

We work in an industry that tends to create narratives that put visibility before usefulness. But if we stop looking at the shop window and observe the internal processes of certain sectors, we discover that real digital transformation doesn’t always come with noise, but with the impact it has and the value it can create around it. Some of the most interesting companies of recent years are not launching apps for the mass market, but solving structural problems in markets where friction, opacity or inefficiency were the norm.

Starting from a solid knowledge of the sector they operate in, applying technology, eager to fix things that were broken and bring order to areas of the market that were just sitting there, waiting for someone with common sense to show up. And, above all, working hard, which is how things actually get done.

Fencia: on the way to bringing order to chaos

A good example of this way of working is Fencia, a platform that, far from getting lost in the search for media attention, has decided to focus its efforts on transforming a market as highly technical and complex as the sale and purchase of non-performing loans linked to real estate assets. And make no mistake, this is no small thing: we are talking about a huge market.

What exactly does Fencia do? Broadly speaking, it provides access to investment products that have historically been absent from open markets, are hard for non-professionals to value and are subject to multiple layers of legal, operational and financial uncertainty.

It is a very large market and, whichever way you look at it, inefficiency rules. That is why, from a business point of view, the value proposition for all the parties involved is so clear.

Is that technology?

Yes, above all it is technology. Fencia acts as a marketplace and creates a digital environment for public auctions with traceability, objective evaluation criteria, user verification and integration of relevant information about the assets and their legal context. In short, it is a digital transactional space that connects sellers with buyers through a process designed for efficiency and that sets an example of transparency. In other words: breaking with the prevailing logic and the long-standing practices of the sector.

Beyond the obvious (that behind a marketplace there is a lot of investment in technology, and that building a user base means “pushing the product” hard on digital channels, working with a powerful marketing platform, etc.), one of the company’s main contributions is its analytics engine.

FenLAB is a financial and legal modelling tool that makes it possible to estimate expected returns on investments, compare recovery scenarios (through the courts or by direct sale), calculate the net present value of a transaction and establish risk curves.

It is worth stressing that, for the market they operate in, offering a tool like this is a very significant contribution and one that will get people talking.

FenLAB is not just a calculation interface; it is also a unified dashboard from which investors can analyze entire portfolios, study divestment strategies, keep the status of their transactions up to date and make better-informed decisions. In this way, what used to be courses of action driven by the manager’s intuition and personal biases become actions grounded in data, simulations and constant feedback loops.

Another way to grow

The case of Fencia is especially interesting because it breaks with some of the clichés associated with tech-based companies. It doesn’t try to scale at any cost and it doesn’t promise stratospheric returns. It is a platform designed to operate, grow under its own steam and offer its users value from minute one.

Nor does it need a massive user community, given how unique its product is. Thanks to everything the platform offers, it opens the world of investing in, let’s say, “special situations” to many potential users who previously had no way into that market. But it is still a transactional field that is not for everyone and that requires training and substantial investment capacity.

We know that NPLs, assignments of auction rights or auctions are not products for every type of investor. But it is equally true that the number of investors who access them is substantially lower than the number who potentially could. The opportunity to capitalize on this transition towards a much more open and efficient market is therefore very clear.

The value of building

Growing well and building platforms on solid foundations, delivering what you promise. Understanding what problems you solve, for whom and with what competitive advantages. Visibility without a model does not create sustainability. Fencia is just one example of what it means to innovate without dressing the project up as a show, putting the reliability of the model, process improvement and advanced use of data first. Seeing technology as a vehicle and not as an end in itself. Little by little, companies like this are set to transform entire sectors from within, and in the near future we will be hearing much more about them.