Charlie Kroll, chief executive officer of Andera Inc., founded the company, which sells software to financial services firms, during his senior year at Brown University.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

It’s not quite selling hot chocolate in August, but pitching products to the collapsing financial services industry is not easy in these days of bankruptcies and layoffs.

Despite the economic slowdown, however, Providence-based Andera Inc. says banks have been gobbling up its financial software. In the last year, the company says, it has doubled its revenue.

Banks have suffered deep loses from poor investments, generating dismal balance sheets, a shortage of cash to loan –– and a big opportunity for Andera. Unable to borrow money, financial institutions are hunting for new depositors, boosting interest in software that lets customers quickly register accounts online.

“They’re in desperate need for cash and new deposits and that’s what we allow them to do,” Jennifer Kroll, Andera’s marketing manager, said. Her husband, Charlie Kroll, founded the company in 2000. “If anything is getting knocked off their priority list, it’s not us.”

Andera, a privately held business, did not disclose its revenue or net income from last year. Its 2007 revenue was $3.75 million, The Providence Journal has reported. In a statement, the company said it hired 28 new employees last year, increasing its staff to 57.

In addition to a set-up fee, Andera charges clients for each account opened using its online software, hosted on servers in Boston.

Andera is a favorite of state leaders, who hold it up as proof that technology start-ups can survive in Rhode Island’s sputtering economy. Charlie Kroll, 30, now the company’s chief executive officer, started the business during his senior year at Brown University, renting 3,000 square feet on the second floor of a Westminster Street office building next to a Dress Barn clothing shop.

Rhode Island has struggled with a so-called brain drain that sees talented college graduates leave the state, particularly programmers lured by the information-technology cluster in Massachusetts.

But Kroll stayed, working as a Web designer on a variety of projects, including a site promoting the DVD release of the movie RoboCop.

Bank Rhode Island later hired Andera to develop CampusMate, a site that allowed parents of students at the Rhode Island School of Design and other universities to pay tuition online.

Using the same site, students could open checking accounts at Bank Rhode Island. “That kind of morphed into what our product is today,” Jennifer Kroll said. “Charlie saw a great need for something like this in the marketplace.”

By last year, the names of hundreds of customers had wallpapered Andera’s small headquarters and crowding had exiled several employees into the kitchen. Last January, the company leased the building’s third floor for software developers. Seven other programmers work out of an office in Russia, managed by a Russian employee in Providence who Kroll met at Brown.

Kroll has been rewarded for sticking around. In 2006, the U.S. Small Business Administration named him Rhode Island Young Entrepreneur of the Year. The next year, Governor Carcieri visited the Andera offices, the first stop on his “innovation tour.” The Slater Technology Fund, a taxpayer-backed pool of venture capital, has poured $750,000 into the company, including a $350,000 investment last May.

In all, Andera has recruited $2.5 million in investments, Kroll said.

The national financial meltdown has many small businesses struggling to survive the year. Andera predicts revenue will surge.

Even small credit unions long ago adopted online banking, allowing depositors to review their accounts and transfer funds over the Web. But only 5 percent of banks allow customers to open accounts over the Internet, according to Kroll.

Andera’s software, which meets regulatory requirements and prevents fraud by instantaneously checking customer information against public records and credit agency data, may eliminate the last reason to stand in line at a bank.

“It’s inevitable that all banks will allow you to open an account online,” Kroll said in an interview yesterday. “This is the last big piece of online banking. The potential is really big.”

bgedan@projo.com