Thinking Capital Acquired by Canadian Finance Firm Purpose Financial

Jeff Mitelman (left) and Som Seif (Right)

Thinking Capital, a leader in the fintech lending industry in Canada, was acquired last week by Canadian finance company, Purpose Financial, based in Toronto.

“Under the Purpose Financial umbrella, our time to market on product innovation and funding capacity will be greatly amplified,” said Jeff Mitelman, CEO and co-founder of Thinking Capital.

Mitelman, who co-founded Thinking Capital in 2006, has long been an advocate for improving the way small business credit is evaluated and communicated in Canada.  

“The challenge in Canada is that our lending institutions historically either don’t lend to small business or don’t lend to enough of our small businesses,” Mitelman told deBanked. “And that’s driven by the fact that so many of the measures of small business credit worthiness simply don’t exist. Our credit bureaus don’t report on it, there aren’t metrics or scores unique to small business, and most significantly, small business credit has never been attached to retail or institutional conduits for funding.”

This is where Purpose Financial comes in. Mitelman believes that Purpose Financial’s investment arm and its relationship with Omers, a large Canadian pension fund, will provide small businesses with “access to conduits that historically small businesses have never been able to access.”

Thinking Capital provides an MCA product, which it calls Flexible, as well as a term product, which it calls Fixed. It also helps power loans provided by large companies like Staples.  

Purpose Financial has three verticals: Investment Management (retail and institutional), Digital Technology, and Capital / Funding.

“Thinking Capital is a clear leader in the small to medium-sized business lending space…” said Som Seif, CEO of Purpose Financial.  “[And] this acquisition brings together leading origination, asset management, and technology platforms as a unified entity, and enables us to bolster our product capabilities and optimize the technology, distribution, and funding model of our combined business.”

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.