That happened in April — Firmeo’s third full month of commercial sales. Since we launched the business earlier this year, several of you have asked how it is progressing. This is our update, with the numbers and the context behind them.
The foundation: Ekspres Pożyczka
Before talking about Firmeo’s first months, it is worth being clear about what came before. Firmeo is not a standalone experiment. It is being built by the same team that operates Ekspres Pożyczka — a Polish consumer lender that has been profitable, audited, and growing every year.
Ekspres Pożyczka is operated by Argentum Capital sp. z o.o. in Warsaw, and has been growing year on year. Loan principal originated in 2024 and 2025:
A profitable P&L, a portfolio above EUR 11 million, and loan principal originations growing 66.9% year-on-year. These are not pitch-deck figures. They are audited results.
Here is how Ekspres Pożyczka closed 2025:
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METRIC
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2025 RESULT
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Revenues
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EUR 10.58 m
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Net profit
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EUR 200,500
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Net profit margin
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1.9%
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Return on equity (ROE)
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9.0%
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Active loan portfolio (07.05.2026)
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EUR 11.34 m
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Credit loss / insurance cost
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4–6% of insured portfolio
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A few points stand out from these numbers.
Audited profitability is meaningful in this segment. Polish non-bank consumer lending tightened materially after the 2023 regulatory changes capped non-interest costs more strictly. Sustaining profitability through that transition has not been the norm — many operators of similar size have not managed it. Ekspres Pożyczka has, and is reinvesting that profit into continued growth.
Growth on an established base is harder than growth from zero. A 66.9% year-on-year increase in principal originated is significant in absolute terms, and more so given that this is a mature business that already had scale in 2024. The 2025 environment was more cautious than prior years, not less. Many Polish lenders shrank in 2025; Ekspres Pożyczka grew.
An active book of EUR 11.34 m of principal, EUR 78.4 m of loan principal originated in 2025 alone, and audited financials — this places Ekspres Pożyczka in the mid-range of Polish non-bank consumer lenders, with the operational depth and reporting infrastructure that comes with it.
Credit risk is insured, not absorbed. The Ekspres Pożyczka portfolio is insured. The business does not experience credit losses directly — instead, it pays an insurance premium of approximately 4–6% of the insured portfolio, and the insurer covers underlying borrower defaults. This converts what would otherwise be a variable credit-loss expense into a predictable, contained cost, and is a meaningful structural protection for the lender’s P&L.
This is the team and the operational discipline now behind Firmeo.
Why Firmeo exists
Firmeo is a technology-enabled SME lender fully owned by Hive finance group and focused on Poland’s micro, small and medium-sized businesses. It is not a payday lender — Firmeo does not serve the consumer market. It offers business instalment loans, with disciplined underwriting and fully digital origination.
We launched Firmeo because the SME segment in Poland is structurally underserved by traditional banks — particularly in fast financing, smaller ticket sizes, flexible underwriting, and digital experience. The Ekspres Pożyczka team had already built the underwriting infrastructure, the credit-bureau integrations, and the digital onboarding capability. The opportunity was to apply that capability to a much larger market segment that was not being served well.
PRODUCT AT A GLANCE
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Loan size: PLN 5,000 – PLN 200,000
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Terms: 3–12 months
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Customers: sole proprietors and limited liability companies
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Process: fully online application, online bank statement analysis, credit bureau checks (including Poland’s largest, BIK), and same-day funding capability
How Firmeo is progressing
The first two loans went out at the very end of January 2026. Proper commercial sales started in February. Here is the curve so far:
Cumulatively, the picture is consistent — each month adds materially to the running total funded since launch:
As of 7 May 2026, Firmeo has funded 115 SME loans for a cumulative PLN 2.5 million (≈ EUR 580k), with strong month-on-month growth every month since launch..
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115
SME LOANS FUNDED
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EUR 580k
CUMULATIVE ORIGINATIONS SINCE LAUNCH
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~EUR 5,150
AVERAGE LOAN SIZE
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These are first-quarter results from a young book. The trajectory is real, but it is also early. Some metrics that work for mature short-term lenders — such as repeat borrower rate — are not yet meaningful for Firmeo, because SME instalment loans have longer maturities and customer cycles develop over time, not weeks.
How we are managing risk
The team made a deliberate choice not to chase aggressive volume from day one. The current focus is portfolio quality, underwriting discipline, and risk calibration — not maximising originations. First results looks even better than Poland consumer lending business.
We will say this directly: in a more cautious economic environment, chasing unsustainably high origination targets carries its own risks. We have chosen a more measured path, and we think it is the right one for a lender at this stage.
Unit economics
A few numbers on how Firmeo earns:
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Customer acquisition cost (CAC): approximately 4% of funded loan value
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Average customer pricing: approximately 4.2% per month (combined interest and non-interest cost)
That spread, combined with same-day digital funding and a scalable broker/affiliate distribution channel, is what gives Firmeo a clear path to operational efficiency as the book grows.
What this means for Hive5 investors
For Hive5 investors who want exposure to the Polish SME lending opportunity — through a team that is already operating a profitable consumer lender in the same country — this is the current offer:
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HIVE5 · CURRENT OFFER
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24 mo.
TERM
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14.5%
INTEREST RATE (P.A.)
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+1%
LOYALTY BONUS (UP TO)
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A final word
Firmeo is in its first year. We are not going to oversell that fact, and we will not pretend that early-stage numbers carry the same weight as audited multi-year results. They do not.
What we can say is this: the team behind Firmeo has done this before in Poland, with results that are publicly reportable. The market opportunity is real and structurally underserved. The early curve is what we hoped it would look like, and the risk discipline matches what we committed to at launch.
Thank you for being part of Hive5.
— The Hive5 Team
Note on figures: 2025 figures presented in this update are unaudited internal management numbers. The most recent audited Hive Finance Group consolidated financial statements cover the year ended 31 December 2024 and were independently audited by UAB Veritas Auditas (unmodified opinion, IFRS as adopted by the EU). The full audit report is available here.
