When Loes Daniels started her company from a laptop on her kitchen table, it was hard to imagine she’d one day own a sleek headquarters on Amsterdam’s Concertgebouwplein. “It’s super important to attract top talent,” says Daniels, founder of Experiencegift, a global platform for personalised travel and activity gift cards. “Having a headquarters that reflects our success and ambition helps us do that.”
Twelve years ago, Daniels wanted to give her sister a present—a stay in a London hotel. She had to put the gift together herself, right down to the gift card. It gave her an idea: make it easy to give someone the gift of a hotel stay. Today, her online company sells gift cards for hotels, flights, train journeys and experiences in over 100 countries. With offices in London, New York and Athens, the business has grown rapidly. Now, with a new Amsterdam headquarters, Daniels says the company is ready for its next chapter, and she’s opening an office in Dubai.
The Concertgebouwplein headquarters was possible thanks to a loan from ABN AMRO—financing that was in turn backed by a landmark securitisation deal between ABN AMRO and the European Investment Bank Group. “Without the ABN AMRO financing, we would have found a way,” Daniels says. “But it would have been a distraction. We need to focus on building innovative products, marketing and growing the business.”
How the deal works
The €1 billion synthetic securitisation transaction is the largest securitisation ever by the EIB Group. It’s also the first securitisation transaction for ABN AMRO, and a major step for the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, which structures the Group’s securitisation transactions.
“This is a landmark transaction, remarkable both for its scale and its importance to ABN AMRO’s strategic objective,” says Jean-Baptiste Giraud, the EIB loan officer who manages the relationship between the European Union’s financing arm and ABN AMRO.
A synthetic securitisation doesn’t move cash—it moves risk. “The EIB Group took a certain part of the risk of the underlying portfolio,” says Demet Tamam, the EIF investment officer who worked on the deal. “The expected loss remains with ABN AMRO, but the risks arising from the unexpected losses are borne by the EIB and the EIF as investors. Normally, banks must hold regulatory capital to cover unexpected losses. But this transaction transfers such losses to the investors and the regulatory capital becomes available for new lending.”
The risk-sharing deal frees the capital that would have been consumed by the underlying €1 billion portfolio of loans ABN AMRO already extended to Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises and corporations. As a result, ABN AMRO commits to make new loans worth €1.2 billion to its customers – companies like Experiencegift – with part of that financing earmarked for projects that support the climate transition.
“We have provided ABN AMRO with the capacity to do new lending, and they have promised us to do so, partly for environmental sustainability projects, supporting the transition to climate neutrality and a sustainable society,” Tamam says.
Dan Dorner, ABN AMRO’s chief commercial officer for corporate banking, says that the “transaction strengthens the economic growth of our clients, supports their transition to climate neutrality, and boosts SME lending in the Dutch market. At ABN AMRO, funding Europe’s competitiveness is a priority, and we focus our financing on enabling these essential transitions.”
Securitisation boosts Savings and Investment Union
Securitisation is a large and liquid market in the United States and Asia. Regulation has somewhat slowed securitisation’s growth in Europe, by comparison. The European Investment Bank is investing in securitisations issued by European banks and develops innovative securitisation structures to support the development of the market and, ultimately, to generate more financing for businesses like Experiencegift that are vital to the real economy.
European companies tend to depend more on bank financing than their counterparts in the US and Asia, where there is a bigger venture capital market. Consequently, European start-ups are often bought by US investors. European capital markets also lack the depth of US markets, because they are national and, therefore, relatively limited in scale.
The latest push for this kind of union started with an initiative from the European Commission in 2020 for what was then called Capital Markets Union. The name has changed to Savings and Investment Union, but the underlying idea is the same.
By backing innovative banks through investments in securitisations, the EIB Group helps create a more liquid, larger market, and it directly supports the objectives of the Savings and Investment Union.
EIB President Nadia Calviño has spoken of several ways in which the European Investment Bank might provide some of the building blocks to such a union, so that “ideas, businesses and technologies born in the European Union can grow, develop and thrive within our borders”.
Why it matters
For Experiencegift’s Daniels, the new office isn’t just bricks and mortar. It’s a statement of ambition and a motivator to staff. The company’s hybrid working model means employees can choose where they work, including several days a week at home – but many now prefer the new space and are spending more days in the office.
There are also some personal benefits for Daniels. “Now that we have our own office, it’s the first time I have my own room. Importantly, we also have good, quick coffee.”
ABN AMRO ENHANCED SUPPORT TO SMES AND MIDCAPS
The project concerns a guarantee (synthetic securitisation) for an existing portfolio of loans to SMEs and Corporates to support the FI's lending operations in the SMEs and MidCaps sector in the Netherlands.
