Ken Villum Klausen
Roles
Podcast appearances as guest
Banking in the Nordics with Ken Villaum Klausen (Episode 38)
In this episode, I sit down with Ken Villum Klausen, CEO and founder of Lunar.
On the podcast
Lunar announced an investment of around 46 million euros the day before this recording; Ken counts it as roughly its seventh raise, officially a Series E.
Ken previously ran an enterprise point-of-sale and payments business, acquired in 2014, and launched Lunar in 2015 with two co-founders.
Lunar is the only pan-Nordic challenger bank.
The Nordics have about 27 million people, 2.5 million businesses and some 40 payment rails, and customers tend to use one bank for everything.
Lunar's business banking is growing about 10% month on month, adding a couple of thousand businesses a month after reaching 40,000 business customers in January.
Sweden has overtaken Denmark in Lunar's business sign-ups; business accounts launch in Norway soon and in Finland later in the year.
Lunar's Danish licence was the first independent banking licence in Denmark in more than ten years; it applied in stages and received a letter promising the licence once capital was in place.
Lunar has no plans to expand beyond the Nordics for now.
Lunar lets customers buy, hold and sell crypto in its app, which Ken believes no other Scandinavian bank offers.
Lunar uses AI across customer support, engineering and marketing.