Xero to leverage data for small business lending market

After spending 10 years building a cloud accounting platform, New Zealand's Xero is looking to partner with banks to allow small businesses access to capital and debt. Speaking at Xerocon South in Brisbane, Xero CEO and co-founder Rod Drury said the issue with small business is that it is such a fragmented sector, and given how small some businesses are, it often becomes too risky for a bank to lend. "Our view is, if we can partner with large banks and deal with the issues of how to get them lending large pools of money to small business, that would be a very purposeful thing," he said. "If you get a bit more money, you can bring another container of raw materials in, you can bid for a larger project and you can create jobs." Drury said the idea to head down this path came after Xero realised the potential of its data.