Commerzbank announced this week that it will be launching a new SME platform designed to allow small and medium sized German companies access to Schuldschein, or borrower notes. Borrower notes have traditionally been a funding source for larger corporations, which can amount the required sums in excess of 20 million ($23.8 billion), but Commerzbank hopes to address the smaller funding needs of Germany's SMEs by pooling various two-to-five-year Schuldschein funding needs of SMEs across all industries into one portfolio, making them suitable for securitization in terms of size and risk concentration.
Commerzbank will act as both lender and arranger and will also provide interim funding until sufficient securitization volume is generated. Commerzbank said the Schuldschein origination process would begin July 8, with the first ABS structure is expected in the first half of 2006.
