Lendio’s New Turndown Program Grows

Lendio, the marketplace for borrowers and lenders, announced on Monday that its Turndown program has facilitated nearly $60 million in loans in less than a year since its launch last summer. The Lendio Turndown program allows participating lenders to refer borrowers to the Lendio marketplace that have been declined.

“Instead of just saying ‘No’ to a customer and wishing them the best of luck, we’ve established this Turndown program where a lender can say ‘Unfortunately, [you’re] not a great fit for us, but we work directly with Lendio and they have a marketplace and other loan options,’” Lendio CEO Brock Blake told deBanked.

The lender has an incentive to refer a declined customer to the Lendio marketplace because the lender gets a revenue share if the customer it declined is funded by another lender on the Lendio marketplace.

“We’re very excited about the Turndown program because it allows us to deepen the relationships we have with our lenders…and it also helps [lenders] monetize and recoup some of their marketing spend,” Blake said.

While the Turndown program started in beta about two years ago, it wasn’t launched until the second quarter of 2017. So far, the program has 20 lender partners, some of which are not the same as the 70 participating lenders on the Lendio marketplace platform. Blake told deBanked that he hopes all 70 lenders will join the Turndown program, as well others, including banks.

Blake also said that most people think a “turndown” automatically means that a borrower has across-the-board bad credit. He concedes that this could be the case, but also acknowledged that there are a variety of loan products that have different credit requirements.

“If a borrower comes in for an equipment loan and they are not going to qualify for an equipment loan, then they might be declined,” Blake said. “But they might qualify for a working capital loan.”

Based in Salt Lake City, UT, the company was founded in 2011 and also has an office in New York. Of about 150 employees, 100 work at the headquarters in Salt Lake City and 50 work in New York.

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.