Articles by Cheryl Winokur Munk
Alternative Funders Bid Adieu to 2016, Show Renewed Optimism for 2017
December 12, 2016
After getting pummeled in 2016, many alternative funders have licked their wounds and are flexing their muscles to go another round in 2017.
“The industry didn’t implode or go away after some fairly negative headlines earlier in the year,” says Bill Ullman, chief commercial officer of Orchard Platform, a New York-based provider of technology and data to the online lending industry. “While there were definitely some industry and company-specific challenges in the first half of the year, I believe the online lending industry as a whole is wiser and stronger as a result,” he says.
Certainly, 2016 saw a slowdown in the rapid rate of growth of online lenders. The year began with slight upticks in delinquency rates at some of the larger consumer originators. This was followed by the highly publicized Lending Club scandal over questionable lending practices and the ouster of its CEO. Consumers got spooked as share prices of industry bellwethers tumbled and institutional investors such as VCs, private equity firms and hedge funds curbed their enthusiasm. Originations slowed and job cuts at several prominent firms followed.
Despite the turmoil, most players managed to stay afloat, with limited exceptions, and brighter times seemed on the horizon toward the end of 2016. Institutional investors began to dip their toes back into the market with a handful of publicly announced capital-raising ventures. Loan volumes also began to tick up, giving rise to renewed optimism for 2017.
Notably, in the year ahead, market watchers say they anticipate modest growth, a shift in business models, consolidation, possible regulation and additional consumer-focused initiatives, among other things.
MARKETPLACE LENDERS REDEFINING THEMSELVES
Several industry participants expect to see marketplace lenders continue to refocus after a particularly rough 2016. Some had gone into other businesses, geographies and products that they thought would be profitable but didn’t turn out as expected. They got overextended and began getting back to their core in 2016. Others realized, the hard way, that having only one source of funding was a recipe for disaster.
“Business models are going to evolve quite substantially,” says Sam Graziano, chief executive officer and co-founder of Fundation Group, a New York-based company that makes online business loans through banks and other partners.
For instance, he predicts that marketplace lenders will move toward using their balance sheet or some kind of permanent capital to fund their loan originations. “I think that there will be a lot fewer pure play marketplace lenders,” he says.
Indeed, some marketplace lenders are starting to take note that it’s a bad idea to rely on a single source of financing and are shifting course. Some companies have set up 1940-Act funds for an ongoing capital source. Others have considered taking assets on balance sheet or securitizing assets.
“The trend will accelerate in 2017 as platforms and investors realize that it’s absolutely necessary for long-term viability,” says Glenn Goldman, chief executive of Credibly, an online lender that caters to small-and medium-sized businesses and is based in Troy, Michigan and New York.
BJ Lackland, chief executive of Lighter Capital, a Seattle-based alternative lender that provides revenue-based start-up funding for tech companies, believes that more online lenders will start to specialize in 2017. This will allow them to better understand and serve their customers, and it means they won’t have to rely so heavily on speed and volume—a combination that can lead to shady deals. “I don’t think that the big generalist online lenders will go away, just like payday lending is not going to go away. There’s still going to be a need, therefore there will be providers. But I think we’ll see the rise of online lending 2.0,” he says.
Despite the hiccups in 2016, Peter Renton, an avid P2P investor who founded Lend Academy to teach others about the sector, says he is expecting to see steady and predictable growth patterns from the major players in 2017. It won’t be the triple-digit growth of years past, but he predicts investors will set aside their concerns from 2016 and re-enter the market with renewed vigor. “I think 2017 we’ll go back to seeing more sustainable growth,” he says.
THE CONSOLIDATION EQUATION
Ron Suber, president of Prosper Marketplace, a privately held online lender in San Francisco, says victory will go to the platforms that were able to pivot in 2016 and make hard decisions about their businesses.
Prosper, for example, had a challenging year and has now started to refocus on hiring and growth in core areas. This rebound comes after the company said in May that it was trimming about a third of its workforce, and in October it closed down its secondary market for retail investors. Suber says business started to pick up again after a low point in July. “Business has grown in each of the subsequent months, so we are back to focused growth and quality loan production,” he says.
Not long after he said this, Prosper’s CEO, Aaron Vermut, stepped down. His father, Stephan Vermut, also relinquished his executive chairman post, a sign that attempts to recover have come at a cost.
Other platforms, meanwhile, that haven’t made necessary adjustments are likely to find that they don’t have enough equity and debt capital to support themselves, industry watchers say. This could lead to more firms consolidating or going out of business.
The industry has already seen some evidence of trouble brewing. For instance, online marketplace lender Vouch, a three-year-old company, said in June that it was permanently shuttering operations. In October, CircleBack Lending, a marketplace lending platform, disclosed that they were no longer originating loans and would transfer existing loans to another company if they couldn’t promptly find funding. And just before this story went to print, Peerform announced that they had been acquired by Versara Lending, a sign that consolidation in the industry has come.
“I think you will see the real start of consolidation in the space in 2017,” says Stephen Sheinbaum, founder of New York-based Bizfi, an online marketplace. While some deals will be able to breathe life into troubled companies, others will merge to produce stronger, more nimble industry players, he says. “With good operations, one plus one should at least equal three because of the benefits of the economies of scale,” he says.
Market participants will also be paying close attention in 2017 to new online lending entrants such as Goldman Sachs’ with its lending platform Marcus. Ullman of Orchard Platform says he also expects to see more partnerships and licensing deals. “For smaller, regional and community banks and credit unions—organizations that tend not to have large IT or development budgets—these kinds of arrangements can make a lot of sense,” he says.
A BLEAKER MCA OUTLOOK
Meanwhile, MCA funders are ripe for a pullback, industry participants say. MCA companies are now a dime a dozen, according to industry veteran Chad Otar, managing partner of Excel Capital Management in New York, who believes new entrants won’t be able to make as much money as they think they will.
Paul A. Rianda, whose Irvine, California-based law firm focuses on MCA companies, likens the situation to the Internet boom and subsequent bust. “There’s a lot of money flying around and fin-tech is the hot thing this time around. Sooner or later it always ends.”
In particular, Rianda is concerned about rising levels of stacking in the industry. According to TransUnion data, stacked loans are four times more likely to be the result of fraudulent activity. Moreover, a 2015 study of fintech lenders found that stacked loans represented $39 million of $497 million in charge-offs.
Although Rianda does not see the situation having far-reaching implications as say the Internet bubble or the mortgage crisis, he does predict a gradual drop off in business among MCA players and a wave of consolidation for these companies.
“I do not believe that the current state of some MCA companies taking stacked positions where there are multiple cash advances on a single merchant is sustainable. Sooner or later the losses will catch up with them,” he says.
Rianda also predicts that the decrease of outside funding to related industries could have a spillover effect on MCA companies, causing some to cut back operations or go out of business. “Some companies have already seen decreased funding in the lending space and subsequent lay off of employees that likely will also occur in the merchant cash advance industry,” he says.
THE REGULATORY QUESTION MARK
One major unknown for the broader funding industry is what regulation will come down the pike and from which entity. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that regulates and supervises banks has raised the issue of fintech companies possibly getting a limited purpose charter for non-banks. The OCC also recently announced plans to set up a dedicated “fintech innovation office” early in 2017, with branches in New York, San Francisco and Washington.
There’s also a question of the CFPB’s future role in the alternative funding space. Some industry participants expect the regulator to continue bringing enforcement actions against companies. In September, for instance, it ordered San Francisco-based LendUp to pay $3.63 million for failing to deliver the promised benefits of its loan products. Ullman of Orchard Platform says he expects the agency to continue to play a role in the future of online lending, particularly for lenders targeting sub-prime borrowers.
Meanwhile, some states like California and New York are focusing more efforts on reining in online small business lenders, and it remains to be seen where this trend takes us in 2017.
MORE CONSUMER-FOCUSED INITIATIVES ON HORIZON
As the question of increased regulation looms, some industry watchers expect to see more industry led consumer-focused initiatives, an effort which gained momentum in 2016. A prime example of this is the agreement between OnDeck Capital Inc., Kabbage Inc. and CAN Capital Inc. on a new disclosure box that will display a small-business loan’s pricing in terms of total cost of capital, annual percentage rates, average monthly payment and other metrics. The initiative marked the first collaborative effort of the Innovative Lending Platform Association, a trade group the three firms formed to increase the transparency of the online lending process for small business owners.
Katherine C. Fisher, a partner with Hudson Cook LLP, a law firm based in Hanover, Maryland, that focuses on alternative funding, predicts that more financers will focus on transparency in 2017 for competitive and anticipated regulatory reasons. Particularly with MCA, many merchants don’t understand what it means, yet they are still interested in the product, resulting in a great deal of confusion. Clearing this up will benefit merchants and the providers themselves, Fisher notes. “It can be a competitive advantage to do a better job explaining what the product is,” she says.
CAPITAL-RAISING WILL CONTINUE TO POSE CHALLENGES
Although there have been notable examples of funders getting the financing they need to operate and expand, it’s decidedly harder than it once was. Renton of Lend Academy says that some institutional investors will remain hesitant to fund the industry, given its recent troubles. “It’s a valuation story. While valuations were increasing, it was relatively easy to get funding,” he says. However, industry bellwethers Lending Club and OnDeck are both down dramatically from their highs and concerns about their long-term viability remain.
“Until you get sustained increases in the valuation of those two companies, I think it’s going to be hard for others to raise money,” Renton says.
Several years ago, alternative funders were new to the game and gained a lot of traction, but it remains to be seen whether they can continue to grow profits amid greater competition and the high cost of obtaining capital to fund receivables, according to William Keenan, chief executive of Pango Financial LLC, an alternative funding company for entrepreneurs and small businesses in Wilmington, Delaware.
These companies continue to need investors or retained earnings and for some companies this is going to be increasingly difficult. “How they sustain growth going forward could be a challenge,” he says. Even so, Renton remains bullish on the industry—P2P players especially. “The industry’s confidence has been shaken. There have been a lot of challenges this year. I think many people in the industry are going to be glad to put 2016 to bed and will look with renewed optimism on 2017,” he says.
Prior to this story going to print, small business lender Dealstruck was reportedly not funding new loans and CAN Capital announced that three of the company’s most senior executives had stepped down.
Some Alternative Funders See Pot As Next Big Market Opportunity
October 17, 2016
For some funders, marijuana is not just about sewing their wild oats. Rather, they see the business potential of being early to what’s expected to be a highly profitable and long-lasting party.
Indeed, for the right type of funder, doling out money to marijuana-related businesses is a promising market—certainly in the short term because these companies are so capital-starved. Because marijuana is still classified by the feds as an illegal drug, many related businesses can’t even get a bank account much less access to bank loans or more traditional funding. Many alternative funders are also unwilling to lend to marijuana-related businesses, which has left a significant void that’s beginning to be filled by opportunistic private equity investors, venture capitalists and others.
Meanwhile, rapidly shifting public opinion and state-centered initiatives bode well for what many estimate is a multi-billion dollar market. Indeed, industry watchers say marijuana funding will eventually be an even stronger niche than lending to alcohol producers, tobacco companies or pharmaceuticals because of all the ancillary business opportunities related to medical marijuana use.
“I think it’s probably the biggest opportunity we’ve seen since the Internet,” says Steve Gormley, managing partner and chief executive at Seventh Point LLC, a Norwalk, Connecticut-based private equity firm that invests in the cannabis industry. “Consumption continues to grow and demand is there,” he notes.
Despite shifting public opinion, legalized marijuana use is still quite controversial. So, all things considered, it takes a particularly thick-skinned funding company—one that has no moral objectives to marijuana and is also willing to accept a significant amount of legal, business and reputational risk—to throw its hat in the ring.
One of the biggest challenges keeping banks and many mainstream funders at bay is that cannabis remains illegal under law. Despite numerous attempts by proponents to scrap marijuana’s outlaw status, the DEA recently dealt out a significant blow by opting to maintain the status quo. This means that for the foreseeable future marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, on par with LSD and heroin, and as a result many lenders will choose to remain on the sidelines for now.
It remains promising, however, that over the past several years, the federal government has taken a more laissez-faire approach, giving individual states the authority to decide how they will deal with legalizing marijuana use. Forty-two states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and Guam have adopted laws recognizing marijuana’s medical value, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group. Four states—Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado—as well as the District of Columbia have gone even further. They allow the recreational use of marijuana for adults, with certain restrictions. Meanwhile, marijuana initiatives are on the November ballot in numerous states.
As these changes have percolated, forward-thinking alternative funders have been dipping their toes in the market—getting an early start on a market that’s hungrily looking for growth capital. “The last couple years there have been fewer investors than capital needed, but we believe that tide is changing,” says Morgan Paxhia, managing director and chief investor of Poseidon Asset Management LLC in San Francisco, an investment management company founded in 2013 to invest exclusively in the cannabis industry.
Paxhia says he’s starting to see more venture capitalists, lease-finance companies and private equity investors willing to provide liquidity to marijuana-based companies that are seeking to grow. The short-term cash advance marketplace, however, is not there yet. The challenge is finding funders willing to do the business with them.
“The people that are building these businesses have to always be worried about their cash. It’s not a given that they’ll get new additional investment,” Paxhia says. “Most people are quick to brush it aside. They won’t give it a minute to take a serious look at it and understand that it is already a multi-billion dollar market growing at 30 percent annualized for the next several years,”
A QUIETLY GROWING INDUSTRY
There are a number of private investors and venture capitalists who have spent the last several years researching and ramping up to invest in what they see as a goldmine of business opportunities. Many of these companies aren’t shy about publicly expressing their support for change.
“We see this as an opportunity of a lifetime to witness a societal change and we want to be a part of it,” says Paxhia who together with his sister runs a $10 million investment fund.
At the same time, there are also some alternative funders who dabble in this space and won’t discuss it publicly—partly because of the perceived stigma and partly out of concern that their financial backers won’t approve. To cover themselves, some are only willing to deal with companies that have hard assets. Often times the rates they offer are much higher than businesses in other industries with comparable financials would pay.
Andrew Vanam, founder of Rx Capital Funding LLC, an ISO in Norwalk, Connecticut, who focuses on the healthcare and medical industry, has helped a handful of few marijuana-related businesses get funding in the past few years and would love to help facilitate more deals. But he says it’s extremely difficult to find lenders that are willing to fund cannabis-related businesses as well as offer reasonable rates. Many of the files he generates in the cannabis space have incredible financials, positive cash flow, and month-on-month growth. However, lenders still treat these businesses as high-risk and offer rates so high it’s not even worth bringing back to a client. Instead, “they are taking hard money loans from private investors that put these cash advance offers to shame,” he says.
ASSESSING THE RISKS
Certainly there are risks to funding marijuana businesses. In Colorado—one of the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana—values are getting lofty, and people are overpaying for properties that house marijuana-related businesses, notes Glen Weinberg, a partner in Fairview Commercial Lending, a hard-money lender with offices in Atlanta and Evergreen, Colorado.
Weinberg has financed between 75 and 100 commercial real estate loans where marijuana businesses were involved, but says recently he’s shied away. “I’m not comfortable with the valuations at a lot of these marijuana properties,” he says.
Even investors who are bullish on the space urge caution. “If you’re in a [nationwide] market that is growing at about 64 percent per year, that rising tide floats all boats, but there’s a lot of risk, so you have to be careful,” says Chet Billingsley, chief executive of Mentor Capital Inc., a public operating company in Ramona, California, which acquires and provides liquidity for medical and social use cannabis companies.
Billingsley says he has learned some hard lessons through his dealings with about nine marijuana-related companies. For example, he recently won a court judgment against a company that Mentor had supplied with millions of dollars in cash and stock. The company later balked at the terms of the deal and tried to renege, but Mentor ultimately prevailed in court. Still, Billingsley says Mentor went through many unnecessary hassles and racked up $300k in legal costs over the course of its two-and-a-half-year legal battle.
Many business owners in the marijuana space started out during a period when it w as completely illegal. Often these companies march to the beat of their own drum; to protect themselves, lenders need to do more than offer a standard funding contract and hope for the best, Billingsley says.
“The contract has to be solid and it has to be explained in detail to the marijuana operator who is often not sophisticated with regard to contracts.” If you leave things open to interpretation, you’re likely to end up in court, where anything can happen, he cautions.
Companies that fund cannabis businesses say they have very extensive vetting processes—so much so that they turn away a good portion of requests. Jeffrey Howard, managing partner of Salveo Capital in Chicago, says about two-thirds of the companies that come across his desk don’t make it past the company’s initial criteria. “We see a ton of companies and business plans from companies seeking capital to raise money,” he says. “We are going to be very selective about who we invest in and how much.”
Gormley, of Seventh Point, leverages all the same resources he would if he were buying any retail or production manufacturing outfit. He does extremely invasive vetting of the individuals involved and uses private detectives to help.
It many cases it comes down to the business’s management team, according to Paxhia of Poseidon Asset Management. “All the businesses are very early-stage and most companies have a very short track record, so you have to place a greater emphasis on the people,” he says.
OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND
Despite the risks, funders that work in the marijuana space say they are filling an important need by providing capital to marijuana-related businesses. For Gormley of Seventh Point, it’s a calculated risk in an area he’s been following for quite some time. “How often do you get to be part of history, and how often do you get to participate in a burgeoning market?” he says.
Industry participants stress the many funding opportunities aside from companies that cultivate and distribute the plant. Indeed, there are many ancillary businesses that provide products and services geared towards patients and cannabis users without having anything to do with the actual plant.
Howard of Salveo Capital, says his company is gearing up to provide private equity and venture capital to several marijuana-related businesses through its Salveo Fund I and will only make select investments into companies that “touch the plant.” The goal is to eventually have $25 million of committed capital to invest in multiple early-stage companies that offer ancillary products and services to the marijuana industry. “We think there’s more exciting opportunities than ‘touch the plant’ investments,” he says.
Crowdfunding platforms are another avenue for companies in the marijuana space. This type of funding hasn’t yet been utilized to its full potential, industry watchers say.
Eaze Solutions, a San Francisco-based provider of technology that optimizes medical marijuana delivery, is one example of a company that turned to crowdfunding. It raised part of a $1.5 million infusion to fund its expansion via the crowdfunding site AngelList in 2014. Loto Labs, in Redwood City, California, is another example. It raised more than $220k via Indiegogo to fund production of its Evoke vaporizer. There’s also CannaFundr, an online investment marketplace for companies in the cannabis industry to gain access to capital.
Seth Yakatan, co-founder of Katan Associates in Hermosa Beach, California, suggests that crowdfunding will become more of an option for certain types of cannabis based companies, specifically those that aren’t as closely tied to the actual production of the plant. “Until federal regulations change, it’s going to be hard to raise money for an entity where you are actively engaged in the cultivation, distribution or sales of a product that’s federally illegal,” says Yakatan, whose company invests in and advises cannabis-related companies that have a biotech or pharmaceutical orientation.
Because laws on legalized marijuana are still in limbo, industry watchers say the market is still many years away from being mainstream. “Public perception will be similar to alcohol in 10 years from now,” predicts Weinberg of Fairview Commercial Lending, adding that he expects banks to enter the funding arena in five to 10 years.
In the meantime, alternative funders who can stomach risk continue to pave the path for others. Howard of Salveo Capital expects private equity investors, venture capitalists and other alternative players to continue playing a big role in getting the nascent industry off the ground.
“I strongly believe that in the interim there’s a significant advantage for players like us to be funding and to be in on the ground floor of this industry before it changes,” Howard says.
Indeed, many alternative funders believe the potential upside significantly outweighs possible negative consequences. “The perceived risk at this point is far greater than the actual risk,” says Paxhia of Poseidon Asset Management.
Motivating Your Sales Force – Tips From the Floor
August 30, 2016
Fancy steak dinners, electronic devices and cold hard cash are just some of the ways ISOs and funders these days are motivating sales reps to bring in business.
Although it’s largely a field for self-starters, many companies find that even small tokens of appreciation do wonders to increase rep productivity. “Waving a carrot in front of your reps can make a massive difference,” says Zachary Ramirez, branch manager of the Costa Mesa, California branch of World Business Lenders, an ISO and a lender.
When it comes to motivating sales reps, every company does things slightly differently. Some have more established incentive programs, while others are more ad hoc, depending on how the day, week or month is shaping up. The common goal of all the programs, however, is to give a little something to get something greater in return.
Ramirez remembers one sales rep who won a trip to Las Vegas and then continued to be the top rep for three months running. “Those types of rewards can keep a sales team motivated, hungry and excited,” he says.
From time to time, Ramirez offers rewards such as a small cash bonus if a rep meets certain metrics like getting three submissions in a day or multiple fundings in a week. In addition, whenever his reps, who are all hourly employees, hit key performance indicators, Ramirez rewards them with a poker chip. After they accumulate enough, they can trade in their chips for various prizes. Twenty-five poker chips might be worth a flat-screen TV and 50 chips could be an expense-paid trip to Las Vegas, for example.
When it comes to motivation, it’s important to incentivize the correct behavior, Ramirez says, noting that in his earlier years running an ISO, he used to reward reps based on the number of calls they made in a day rather than applications, approvals or fundings.
The latter represent a much more serious commitment and are worth motivating for as opposed to simply making a phone call, where the outcome is uncertain. “Even if they make as many as 500 phone calls in a day, it’s irrelevant if they are not moving the transactions forward by getting applications and bank statements,” he says.
It’s also very important to have clear-cut expectations; reps need to know the consequences of not performing, Ramirez says. Most top salespeople won’t need the stick. But it’s still necessary for them to know the policies, he says.
THE POWER OF SELF-ORIGINATION
One major way United Capital Source incentivizes its 15-person sales force is by self-originating leads. It provides its reps—who are all W2 employees—with merchants that are actively expecting phone calls as opposed to handing them a laundry list of names to pitch which may or may not pan out. It costs more for United Capital to do this, but it works well for the company and for its sales force, says Jared Weitz, chief executive of the New York-based alternative-finance brokerage.
“It enables us to put our guys in a position where they are growing with the company and the company is growing as well,” he says.
In addition, United Capital has an aggressive pay structure that allows salespeople to grow with the company. For instance, the pay plans are all based on how the company is doing overall, as opposed to an individual salesperson’s performance. In this way, it encourages the sales force to work together, as opposed to each person being out for himself. Weitz says its sales team understands that if the company hits x, the sales team gets y. United Capital also offers competitive healthcare and 401(k) plans and there’s no vesting period for employees to receive their 401(k) employer match. Additionally, the company does small things like Friday lunches on the company’s dime as a thank you for time spent. It’s another way to keep the sales team happy, Weitz says.
Fundzio, an alternative funder in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also works very hard to make sure it keeps up its pipeline of fresh leads so that reps don’t have to do that on their own. Indeed, Fundzio provides them with between seven and ten fresh and promising revenue-earning opportunities each day. This helps tie the reps to Fundzio because they have a continuous stream of business and don’t have to find it on their own.
“It guarantees them at bats every day,” says Edward Siegel, founder and chief executive of Fundzio. It also helps tie the reps to Fundzio because they have constant business. “The key thing is having new leads,” he says.
Additionally, anyone who funds a deal gets to spin a wheel in the office at the end of the business day and earn cash or special prizes like concert tickets or a fancy dinner or a $200 gift certificate. Reps really appreciate getting those prizes, which is evident when they come back to work after enjoying their steak dinner at a Fort Lauderdale waterfront restaurant. “I think it creates a fun and relaxed atmosphere feeling. A little bit goes a long way,” Siegel says.
One way Fundzio motivates reps from the get-go is to bring them on initially as independent contractors. If they prove themselves over a 90-day period, they have the opportunity to become an employee. At any given time, the company has about 20 to 25 sales reps, representing a combination of contractors and W2 employees.
Another way Fundzio helps motivate reps is by allowing them to earn residuals from repeat business for the life of the account as long as they are still employed by the funder. Many funders have renewal departments and reps don’t directly benefit when a customer does repeat business, but that’s not the case at Fundzio, Siegel says.
REVVING UP SALES WITH CONTESTS
Certainly, to succeed in the alternative finance industry, sales reps have to be self-starters. It’s a key requirement to do the job well, in part because so many shops are purely commission-based. Nonetheless, many companies find it helps to grease the wheel a bit—regardless of whether reps are independent or W2 employees.
Fast and Easy Funds, for instance, holds weekly contests to encourage its internal sales force of 15 independent contractors. One week the contest may be for the rep with the most dials, another week it’s for the most submissions and another week for the highest number of deals funded. Each contest pays in the vicinity of $150 to $250 cash. “Every week I change it up. They don’t know what the contest is going to be until the last day of the week,” says David Avidon, president of Fast and Easy Funds, a broker and alternative funder in Boca Raton, Florida.
iAdvanceNow, a brokerage firm in Uniondale, New York, runs daily, weekly and monthly bonuses for its 38-person sales force. For instance, if a rep submits two completed deals for approval in a day he or she might get $100 cash; for three completed deals, the cash bonus might be $250, says Eddie Hamid, president of iAdvanceNow.
On a weekly basis, for submitting six complete files, reps get one spin on a big Wheel of Fortune-like apparatus in the office. Everybody is a winner; the prize depends on where the arrow lands. It may be a cash prize of $20, $50, $100 or a physical prize like a 40 inch-Samsung TV, an Apple Watch or iPad, Hamid explains.
On a monthly basis, meanwhile, each team of five to seven sales reps has a goal. If as a team they reach their goal, they get $1,500. Additionally, the top producer of the month—provided he or she has achieved a minimum of three merchants being funded—receives the top producer bonus of $1,500. The runner-up receives a $1,000 bonus and the third place sales rep receives $500. The top team in the office also gets a steak dinner at a local establishment, Hamid says.
The system works because it gives them a drive to obtain a goal while also encouraging friendly competition, says Hamid, noting that he once overheard reps talking about how much they value being named the top producer. “With sales people, they are more concerned with the recognition than the prize or the money they are receiving,” he says.
iAdvance has been in business for about two years. The current motivational system has been in place for about a year-and-a-half and it seems to work very well to motivate the sales force, Hamid says. In addition, if they are having a down sales month, Hamid ups the ante for the daily goals, adding not only cash, but also prizes.
These techniques all help to light a fire under the sales force, he says.
STRATEGIES FOR SLOW DAYS
Sometimes around 3 p.m., if he feels like the room is starting to quiet, Jordan Lindenbaum, director of sales at Excel Capital Management in New York, a business financing ISO, might offer $20 or $30 cash for the next submission. Or he might offer $40 to $50 for two or three submissions by the end
of the day.
“All it takes is one slow day to kill the energy of a sales rep,” he says.
Lindenbaum finds that motivation checkpoints seem to work well. For instance, at the end of the month, the firm commonly gives a $200 bonus to the sales rep with the most submissions. For actual deals funded, Excel Capital is also working to implement a more concrete revenue-based bonus system as well, Lindenbaum says.
Excel Capital works with independent ISOs in addition to its in-house staff to bring in business. To encourage independent ISOs to refer business, the funding company offers higher payouts to those who consistently bring in high quality deals than to ISOs who bring in deals sporadically.
Chad Otar, co-founder and managing partner at Excel Capital, says a key piece of motivating sales reps is to make sure the sales manager feels motivated as well. Accordingly, the firm also makes sure to motivate Lindenbaum with larger payments for doing an outstanding job of motivating the sales force to bring in deals. “We need to motivate the sales manager so the sales manager motivates the people on the phone. It’s a chain effect. You motivate one and it motivates the others,” he says.
Excel Capital also believes in the power of team rewards. Recently, for instance, company executives treated all staffers to a steak dinner at Delmonico’s in New York City. “We’ve done it many times so our team knows they are appreciated and that our goals were met because everyone worked together,” Otar says.
THE SALARY VS COMMISSION CONUNDRUM
Paying reps a base salary in addition to commissions is another strategy some ISOs use to motivate sales reps. A salary is especially meaningful to reps just starting out, notes Ramirez of World Business Lenders.
He says he has worked with a lot of ISOs and many of them don’t want to pay reps a base salary because they feel it’s a mistake to give them a cushion. Because by doing so, reps get comfortable and when they get comfortable, they don’t push deals—or so the thinking goes. But Ramirez believes this is counterproductive to the rep’s career and the ISO’s sales.
He believes reps should be given a big enough base while they are learning the industry—say for 90 days. Giving them $2,500 a month or so, motivates them and it doesn’t choke their possibility for survival. “You have to give every salesperson the opportunity to succeed. Give them some coaching, give them some guidance, give them a little time. But if there’s no possibility of that rep succeeding or being an asset to your team, it’s important to remove them as efficiently as possible,” he says.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but removing dead weight is also motivating for reps who are really working hard to sell, Ramirez says. To keep that person is demoralizing for the other reps—who may feel they don’t have to work as hard either or who feel they have job security even without doing their best. “It fosters complacency,” he says.
Looking Back & Forging Ahead: A Dialogue With David Goldin
June 23, 2016
DeBanked Magazine recently caught up with David Goldin, the founder, president and chief executive of Capify, a New York based alternative funder. Goldin, who started his business in January 2002 as a credit card processing ISO, has been an outspoken and active participant in the alternative funding space since that time. He is also president of the Small Business Finance Association, the industry trade group that he helped found in 2006. The following is an edited transcript of our discussions.
DeBanked: Since you started the business, Capify has grown from a credit card processing ISO into a global company with more than 200 employees in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. Please talk a little about where Capify is today and your future growth plans for the company.
The key here is responsible growth and the responsible providing of capital. Anyone can fund deals. The hard part is collecting the money back, so you have to know how to operate during a down economic cycle. Capify did it very successfully in the last economic downturn. As we move into uncertain times, it seems there’s a greater possibility that the economy is going to get worse over the next 18 months. Even so, we’re working on several new products and new partnerships that we’ll be announcing shortly. Again, the trick is to be responsible about growth. We’re staying laser focused on our business right now and being very selective about where to invest capital in new projects during these uncertain times.
DeBanked: Continuing on the subject of growth, what do you think has been the most significant contributor to the company’s upward progression over the past several years?
I think our underwriting model is what has helped us the most. Our performance data has allowed us to make decisions in tough times and automate our processes further based on historical trends. We have 10-plus-years of performance data in the U.S. and 8-plus-years overseas. Most companies have only three to five years of experience, and most importantly, they haven’t been through an economic downturn.
DeBanked: How has the competitive landscape in the industry changed in the past few years?
Lenders are a different quality now. There is more variation in lenders than ever before—from lower-risk providers of capital to higher-risk providers of capital. Higher-risk providers of capital tend to charge a lot more. They also tend to have very aggressive business practices. The public perception is that all funders are the same—but we all have different business models and ethics in the way we operate our companies. It can be challenging at times to help customers, the media, partners and investors understand the difference between Capify and less scrupulous players.
DeBanked: What do you think the industry will look like in five to 10 years?
I think you’re going to see a lot of consolidation, and I think you’re going to see a whole new variety of products being offered to customers. The customer acquisition cost is too high to only offer one type of product. Similar to banks, alternative funders are going to start offering multiple products, if they aren’t already, and that will help make for a stickier customer and increase the bottom line.
Also, there will be significantly fewer funders than there are today and many ISOs will not be able to survive. I think more and more companies are going to start building their own internal sales forces. There are lower default rates and higher renewal rates in the direct model; the ISOs don’t have skin in the game. I think some of the stronger ISOs over time will become part of the larger funding companies.
DeBanked: There seems to be a consensus in the industry that more regulation of alternative financing is inevitable. How is regulation going to change how alternative funders operate and how might it change the competitive landscape?
I think you’ll see a lot more self-regulation before you see actual regulation when it comes to business-to-business lending. Funders are taking self-regulation more seriously and there have been more associations formed to educate policy-makers about the performance rates, default rates, renewal rates, customer satisfaction levels and how the products work.
The one area there could be potential regulation is in providing capital to sole proprietorships. The argument is that tiny businesses may need more assistance than larger companies, and some make the argument that these micro businesses are quasi-consumers. We disagree. We feel that if a sole proprietor is using the capital for his business, it should be considered a business transaction. However, several factors— including rampant media attention, more publicly traded alternative financing companies, tremendous growth of marketplace lending over the past several years and an election year—provide a recipe for all the regulation noise.
DeBanked: What are the biggest risks our industry is facing right now?
We’ve seen the movie before—in 2007 and 2008—when alternative funders didn’t factor in the severity of how an economic downturn could affect their business. The risk is there again. Funders have to be even more responsible. It’s not about how much you fund, it’s about much you collect back. You can’t be super-aggressive during times you think you may be
going into a down period. There could be significant industrywide fallout from irresponsible underwriting.
DeBanked: What advice would you give to new funders entering the market now?
I think the boat has left the dock; I don’t think they will be able to compete with established players in a meaningful way. Someone who really wants to be in the business should look at acquiring several small to medium-sized companies and rolling them up to get scale. It would be very challenging and require many years of investment to start from scratch at this point to build a substantial company. It’s harder now than it was in the past.
DeBanked: Can you talk a little about where you see the future of banks and alternative funders and how they will work together?
I think some banks will want to acquire platforms for speed to market or partner with platforms where the banks provide the capital and the funders service the loans. The latter is the model that J.P. Morgan and On Deck chose. The challenge is that the banks aren’t going to want to take a risk on applicants that don’t fall within the certain credit profile that they are comfortable lending to. While the partnership model will help banks make decisions faster about lending to small businesses, many small businesses will continue to be underserved. This could, in turn, provide an opening for independent funders who are willing to provide capital, albeit at higher rates because you can’t make a profit providing working capital (typically unsecured) at bank rates to the credit and risk profiles of businesses that most alternative funding companies work with today.
DeBanked: Please address the major technology trends shaping the alternative financing industry and what this means for industry players?
My opinion is the technology is ahead of the typical business brick-and-mortar business owner. Whilethe technology exists for business owners to go to a website and provide their personal and business data, we have found most business owners want to speak with a salesperson first, get a comfortable level and then apply online. (Compared with going right to a website and applying without a human involved). However, each year that goes by more and more business owners get more comfortable with technology and a greater percentage of them will look for a completely online experience. Being that it costs millions of dollars and years of time to build these platforms, you have to constantly evolve your platform to stay relevant. You can’t just snap your fingers and have it up and running.
I think the trend for our specific industry is being technology-enabled rather than being pure-bred tech companies. Customers still want to speak to people,but you also have to have viable backend technology so your business is scalable. Technology, such as digital bank statement transmission via various platforms, also helps cut down fraud compared with reviewing manual documents that can easily be forged or “Photoshopped.”
DeBanked: How can alternative funding companies best meet the challenges they are likely to face over the next few years?
I think alternative funders need to focus on more responsible providing of capital. This means really focusing on business owners’ ability to repay, taking a hard look at overburdening them with debt through stacking, for example, and further evaluating the referral sources of business they are getting their deal flow from in order to ensure that business owners get the best possible experience. Furthermore, I think as more alternative funding companies focus more on profitability and not just growth, coupled with the tightening of available institutional capital with an appetite for our industry, you will see some of the recent trends potentially reverse such as extremely high approval rates and industry margin compression.
Is That a Bird, a Plane or a Recession in the Wings?
April 26, 2016
The R-word has been rearing its ugly head with more frequency in recent months, propelled by falling stock prices, higher borrowing rates and the dollar’s ascent.
While a recession—typically defined as a fall in GDP in two consecutive quarters—is far from certain, it would most definitely be a double whammy for an industry that many believe is already ripe for a pullback due to multiple years of unfettered growth. Indeed, many funders have experienced great success riding on the coattails of the long-running favorable market. Some industry participants fear these funders are masking loss rates behind strong volume—a particularly problematic strategy if the volume were to taper off due to an economic downturn.
“It’s no different than what happened in the housing market in 2008,” says Andrew Reiser, chairman and chief executive of Strategic Funding Source Inc. in New York. If and when a recession occurs, several industry participants expect there will be a culling of the weakest firms. They say inexperienced and less-diverse funding companies are particularly at risk, as are MCA funders that don’t keep close tabs on their business dealings. They also believe that venture capital funding will be even harder to come by and regulation will rain down more heavily on the industry.
RISK FACTORS THAT SPELL TROUBLE IN RECESSIONARY ENVIRONMENT
For a variety of reasons, Glenn Goldman, chief executive of Credibly, a New York-based small business lending platform, believes that fewer than 50 percent of the funders today are prepared to weather a recession. Many don’t have strong data science and risk management, for example. Some newer platforms also don’t have the seasoned management to help guide them appropriately, he says.
Another red flag is when funders rely too heavily on a single source of funding. Goldman points back to 2008 when the commercial paper market disappeared. Companies that had on balance-sheet funding capacity were able to weather that storm because they weren’t exclusively relying on commercial paper or securitization, he says.
Goldman believes the prudent way to manage an alternative funding business is to utilize a combination of on-balance sheet financing, whole loan sales and securitization. “If the market moves sideways and you rely only on a single source of funding, you are at risk. It’s an incredibly obvious statement, but it becomes more acute when the economic environment comes under pressure,” he says.
Notably, there are very few sizable alternative funders who successfully survived the last big recession, meaning there are hundreds of companies now doing business in this space that don’t have years-worth of data to help them make more prudent underwriting decisions. Strategic Funding, for example, had the highest loss rate in its history in the third quarter of 2008 and has used its wealth of data to learn from past mistakes. “There’s no doubt that it is critical to be able to correlate events with history,” Reiser says.
Funders are also going to have to batten down the hatches when it comes to their underwriting standards. “Just because someone paid you back yesterday doesn’t mean he’s going to pay you back tomorrow,” Reiser says. “You have to be right more often in a recessionary environment.” Indeed, liquidity for originators and investors will become even more critical in a recession.
“Liquidity is king,” says David Snitkof, chief analytics officer and co-founder of Orchard Platform, a New York-based technology and data provider for marketplace lending. He points out the large number of companies that went belly-up in the last big recession for lack of liquidity. “The more that participants in this market are able to diversify their capital structure, diversify their funding sources and work with multiple providers, the better off they will be,” he says.
Another challenge will be for funders that haven’t had their servicing and collection capabilities adequately stress tested, Snitkof says. These firms should consider working with an outside provider to help them scale their collections as necessary. In this way, a company that needs additional resources can scale up pretty quickly without disrupting operations.
THE P2P OUTLOOK
To be sure, all types of companies fall under the alternative funding umbrella and each will have its own special challenges in a recession. In the P2P space, for example, having a diverse investor base and a sound credit model will become increasingly important. Peter Renton, an investor and founder of Lend Academy, an educational resource for the peer-to-peer lending industry, predicts that some of the newer P2P platforms will struggle more in a recession. That’s because they haven’t had as much time to accumulate and interpret borrower data and adapt their models accordingly.
Lending Club, for example, has gone through many iterations of its credit model over its multiple years in business, and it’s much better than it was even five years ago, says Renton, who had around $37,000 invested with Lending Club as of the third quarter of 2015. “The best data that anyone can get is payment history with your existing borrowing base,” he says.
Particularly in a recession, P2P players need to be extra careful about maintaining strict underwriting standards. Marketplaces may have to tighten their borrowing standards to lend to more solid companies, so the likelihood of defaults isn’t as great. So, for instance, if their standard was once borrowers with a FICO score of at least 640, they could up it to 660, Renton says.
Platforms also have to make sure they have enough investors to satisfy their borrowers, which is why having a diverse investor base is so important. In a recession if you have three hedge funds and that’s your entire investor base, they could all go away. By contrast, if a platform has five thousand individual investors, they aren’t all going away. You may lose 10 percent or 20 percent of them, but if you still have four thousand investors, you can still have your loans funded, Renton explains.
One way to do well even in a recessionary environment is for P2P players to tweak their credit model to be more restrictive so their default rates are lower. “If your default rates are only 3 percent and your competitors are at 6 percent, you’re going to get more business,” Renton says.
Certainly, alternative funding companies can get into trouble if they don’t act early enough when they see a change in activity and economic performance, says Ron Suber, president of Prosper Marketplace, a P2P lender based in San Francisco. Funders need to be able to nimbly adjust their pricing, risk models and expected default rates as needed. “Every marketplace will see a change in borrower behavior as unemployment increases and there are economic declines. Therein lies the question: what does the marketplace do?” Prosper, for instance, recently raised rates on loans, telling investors it had increased its estimated loan loss rates and therefore was updating the price of loans to reflect increased risk. Understanding risk and pricing loans accordingly is always important, but even more so in a shaky economic environment. “You always have to stay on top of it,” Suber says.
MANY MCA FUNDERS AT HIGH-RISK IN RECESSION
If a recession strikes, some observers believe the risk to certain MCA funders will be particularly acute. That’s because new players have entered the MCA space over the past several years, and a sizable number of them don’t have a good handle on their business. Higher default rates could force many of them to shutter operations. Certainly merchants especially those with bad credit—will need more access to capital during a recession and MCA is a natural place for these businesses to turn. But MCA funders have to do a better job of adjusting for risk and keeping adequate records if they hope to weather an economic downturn, says Yoel Wagschal, a certified public accountant in Monroe, New York, who has worked with a number of struggling MCA funders. “A small recession could lead to big failures if you don’t take the right steps,” he says.
To avoid business-threatening issues, Wagschal recommends that MCA funders take steps now to develop stronger underwriting systems to vet merchants better. He believes it’s more prudent to do fewer deals with higher rated merchants than to continue taking on risky businesses as customers. If they see more defaults are coming in, funders should also consider raising their factor rates, he says. Another option is to halt new funding for three to four months to re-energize the business. “It’s much harder to make money than to lose money,” he notes.
If they don’t already have them—and many don’t—MCA funders also need to invest in a good accounting system that can flag their profits, losses and defaults on a real-time basis. This information allows funders to make swift decisions about the business so they can take necessary steps at the right time, he says. “You don’t wait for months, or year end, to analyze all the facts. You might have already lost your business and lost your money because money is just turning around so quickly.”
UNCERTAINTY ABOUNDS FOR VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENT
Existing funders won’t be the only ones to struggle in a recession; the well of venture capital funding for new entrants could easily dry up as well,like it did in the last big recession. That’s not to say VC firms will lose interest entirely, but new funders will have to work even harder to get noticed. “There are so many originators, for any new entrants, the bar gets higher and higher to prove that you have something truly unique,” says Snitkof of Orchard Platform. Reiser of Strategic Funding already sees this scenario playing out. “I don’t think the market [lately] has been very favorable to our space,” he says, noting the dearth of exit strategies that have made it riskier for VC firms to invest. “It’s always easy to get in; it’s hard to get out,” he says.
GET READY FOR MORE REGULATORY ACTION
Industry watchers also believe the alternative funding industry will become more heavily regulated in a recession and its aftermath.
Reiser points to all the additional restrictions placed on the mortgage industry in the wake of the housing market bust in 2008. At a time when the housing market was restricting, you had more compliance placed on it as well. “I think you’ll have more compliance in our industry too. That’s just another cost that will have to be absorbed,” Reiser says.
In a recession, there’s more likelihood that harm can come to customers and that will drive regulatory action as well, he adds.
THE ART OF MAKING TOUGH DECISIONS
If the economy turns south, many alternative funders will be forced to make tough underwriting decisions. It can be hard if your analysis of data tells you that things are going to turn downward and your competitors don’t take the same stance, says Stephen Sheinbaum, founder of Bizfi, a New York-based online marketplace.
In that case, funders have to decide whether they are willing “to tighten and pivot while the rest of the players in the space are going full steam ahead,” he says. “That’s where you have to have some conviction and trust your data and do the right thing.”
Of course, even as the rest of the economy is faltering, recessionary times can also be a boon for enterprising companies. For example, the 2008 recession turned out to be positive for Bizfi, which at the time was called Merchant Cash and Capital. Using housing starts, consumer spending and other data, the company correctly predicted the economy was going to take a severe turn downward. It therefore made tweaks to its underwriting guidelines, moving into certain industries and away from others it deemed riskier. “Change can be hard, but it can be for the better,” Sheinbaum says.
Indeed, alternative funders that embrace new opportunities can be successful even in a broad economic downturn. “It’s about having the foresight to be able to discern good from bad and just being really disciplined about it,” says Snitkof of Orchard Platform.
‘Year of the Broker’ Gives Way to ‘Year of the Reduced Commission’
February 21, 2016
Many brokers just starting out in the alternative funding space may be in for a rude awakening. It’s not that the ‘Year of the Broker’ is over, per se, but 2016 certainly represents a new chapter for newbies—one in which getting rich quick and succeeding over the long-haul will be much more difficult.
“It’s the ‘Year of the Leader’ now. Fresh brokers coming into our space will have to work harder to set themselves apart, and it will be harder for many of them to make the money they once did,” says Amanda Kingsley, chief executive of Sendto, a Palm Bay, Florida-based firm that assists companies in the alternative finance industry with referral marketing and operational growth programs.
Funders today remain hungry for deals and are still paying relatively high rates to bring in new business. Yet there are several competitive realities putting a damper on a new broker’s earnings power.
“A few years ago, individual brokers could be making $20,000 or even $40,000 a month. Now those numbers are much more difficult to reach unless brokers have a unique lead generation method or their own money to participate in the deals,” says Zachary Ramirez, a vice president and branch manager in the Orange, California office of World Business Lenders, a New York-based lender.
Most funders today allow brokers to charge merchants between 8 and 12 points above the buy rate, with some allowing as high as 15 to 20 points, according to industry participants. But to win business amid a flurry of competition, brokers are being forced to take a lower cut on many deals. Not only are there more brokers to compete with, but merchants are also savvier—and more price-conscious—about alternative funding products than they were several years ago.
For higher quality deals, there’s another force at play driving down what sales reps can earn. That’s because a handful of large funders are instituting caps on what brokers can charge top-quality merchants. “They want to make sure that the price that’s charged to the merchant is fair,” says Stephen Sheinbaum, founder of Bizfi, a New York-based funder that has not instituted these caps.
Together, these competitive realities mean that sales reps, on average, are making much less than they did a few years ago. For example, on high quality deals, brokers might only be able to make 3 to 8 points per deal on average. For lower quality deals, on the other hand, brokers might make as much as 15 to 20 points.
So far, the changing economic tide hasn’t discouraged new sales reps from jumping in. In fact, the market is still hot for new brokers who continue to pour into the market at a torrid pace, buoyed by rampant media attention and aggressive advertising by funders and large brokerage houses. “I think it’s even worse now,” says John Tucker, a solo broker since 2009 who also blogs for DeBanked. “They’re signing up anybody with a heartbeat and a pulse.”
Clinging to Misperceptions
Despite the overcrowding issue, industry watchers expect new brokers will continue to flood in as alternative funding continues to gain traction. Many of these new brokers, however, won’t be around very long. That’s because many of them are coming into the space, especially from other sales-oriented jobs, thinking it’s easier than it is. “I think many people are going to come into the space, fail and leave bloodied and bruised,” says Ramirez of World Business Lenders.
Indeed, there are many new brokers who are still holding on to outdated notions about the business. Some are primed to think that they can easily make 10 points on a $100,000 deal and if they do that once a month, they have the potential to make $120,000 a year. “It’s just not as easy as it’s promoted to be,” says Tucker, who owns 1st Capital Loans in Troy, Michigan. Even Tucker, a seasoned broker, frequently has trouble connecting with merchants nowadays because they are inundated with sales pitches. They’ll hang up on him as soon as he makes it clear he’s a broker because they are getting so many calls from competitors, he says.
William Ramos, owner of Right Away Funding in Phoenix, Arizona, recently worked with a new broker who was convinced he was going to make $5,000 a week from the get-go. Ramos tried to manage his expectations by explaining he’d first have to learn the business and be persistent if he hoped to make that kind of money.
Ramos says the broker took his advice by asking lots of questions and working hard over the next six months. He’s not making what he had originally hoped, but he is up to about $5,000 a month, says Ramos, the former president of Staten Island, New York-based Supreme Capital Group, which he sold in 2015 to open a new firm.
In talking to new brokers, Nathan Abadi president of Excel Capital Management in New York, a lender and MCA funder, also sees a lot of misconceptions about what they think they can make and how easy it will be. It becomes problematic when the reality doesn’t match up with their expectations. For instance, he recently hired a used car salesman who worked for his company for about two months before they parted ways. The broker thought that because he had sold so many cars in the past, he could easily apply that to alternative funding. But he didn’t want to take the time to thoroughly learn about the new product set. He was just trying to ink deals based on cost, which is no longer a viable strategy, Abadi explains. “Customers know what the rates are. They’re not just applying with one person,” Abadi says.
The first month, the new broker closed a $175,000 deal based on a lead he was given and with Abadi doing the bulk of the legwork. After that, the broker got a few more deals, but he couldn’t do it on his own without significant support from the firm. A big problem was that he didn’t understand the math behind the deals he was pitching. “If merchants ask you a question and you can’t answer it properly, you’re done. The deal’s over. Not enough people are taking the time to understand the market as a whole,” says Abadi, whose firm is in the process of hiring new brokers for its internal sales force.
Edward Siegel, founder and chief executive of Fundzio LLC, a funding company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says he still sees plenty of new brokers who come into the business believing they can easily close a deal for $50,000, make 10 points and sustain that type of income. “The market has changed. The cost of capital has gotten a lot lower for the customer, and since there are more brokers in the marketplace they are willing to take a lesser amount just to get the deal to the finish line,” he says.
A lot of brokers come into the industry all gung ho and then flounder when they see how hard it really is. Siegel says he’s seen them submit deals for a few months and then realize they were living a pipe dream and leave the industry. “It’s not easy, especially in a competitive marketplace, especially when 10 other brokers might be knocking on that same guy’s door,” he says.
Nearing the breaking point
Andrew Reiser, chairman and chief executive of Strategic Funding Source, a New York-based funder, says that many brokers are operating under a false sense of security. “We’re in a strong economy in our space largely because of lack of other available sources of capital from larger institutions. When a market is very forgiving, mistakes are easily absorbed and swept under the carpet.”
He believes it’s going to get even harder for brokers over time, likening the situation with brokers today to that of stockbrokers a few decades ago. People used to be inundated with calls from stockbrokers at firms of all sizes about this stock or that one. Now many small brokerage houses have disappeared and larger firms have moved away from cold calling. Instead they are focused on money management and proving their prowess as specialists.
“You can’t be all things to all people serving a market this size,” he says.
Survival Strategies
Kingsley of Sendto says she receives many questions from new brokers about how to compete effectively, and it’s not an easy answer. Having a niche product, though, can help. “If you can learn how a particular industry works along with appropriate deal placement, you can develop a really good client base. It helps when presenting your clients to funding companies and you will build a more professional relationship,” she says.
Tucker, the broker with 1st Capital Loans, notes that UCCs and Aged Leads are outdated marketing tactics and says most new brokers don’t have enough industry knowledge to critically think to create new strategies for survival. “All they will end up doing is burning through the little capital that they do have and be out of the business within 12 to 18 months,” he says.
Having good training is critical for new brokers to survive, according to Mike Andriello, president of Cushion Capital Corporation in Poughkeepsie, New York. “I think that if brokers focus on the nature of the industry, actually pick the business owners’ minds and learn their business as best as they can, they will have a lot of success. It’s not all about making the biggest commissions; it’s about having the biggest client book,” he says.
Ramirez of World Business Lenders believes brokers can do better for themselves long-term by syndicating because it’s a way to make more money. “I don’t think it’s a long-term strategy if a broker’s not participating in his own deals,” he says.
Granted, some funders make it easier for brokers to participate than others do, but Ramirez believes brokers should seize opportunities to earn interest income over the life of the loan. So, for instance, on a $100,000 loan, instead of earning a $20,000 commission upfront, a broker might be able to apply that money to the deal and earn $26,000 or $28,000 over the life of the loan.
Of course, this strategy won’t work well for brokers living paycheck to paycheck. “But if you don’t need the commissions right away, you can roll the commissions into deals and increase your earnings exponentially,” he says. “Because of rising acquisition costs and decreased commission averages per deal, being forced to participate, or syndicate, is the natural evolution.”
Gearing for the Future
To be sure, industry watchers believe there is still ample opportunity for new brokers with drive and ambition to enter the space. “Successful brokers will always have a place in the ecosystem,” says Sheinbaum of Bizfi.
But there’s a general consensus that from now on these brokers will have to work harder than they have in the past to thrive. Says Andriello of Cushion Capital: “2016 will be the year of who was smart enough and made the right business moves to stay progressing and growing. It will also be the year a lot of funders and brokerage firms close shop.”
Over time, the changing economic reality will continue to set in. While it will be harder for individual brokers, it’s best for the industry when new sales reps understand the realities of the market and how to compete effectively. “You want the smartest people in the space. The more well-educated they are about the products and the processes, the better off everyone is,” Sheinbaum says.
Despite everything, it’s still a great time to be getting into the industry, provided you have the right mindset and proper resources behind you, according to Ramos of Right Away Funding. “If you’re just coming in and you just want to collect your weekly check, now’s not a good time to be a broker. It’s a great time for people who are hungry, motivated and determined to make something out of it.”
Got a Ferrari or Fine Art? If So, You May Have More Leverage Than You Think
December 23, 2015If you own a Ferrari, fine art or expensive wine, getting access to capital may be easier than you think.
Although it’s still a niche market, luxury asset-backed lending has been gaining traction lately, particularly with small and mid-size business owners. These executives are enticed by the ability to use certain high-priced valuables as a means of getting large amounts of cash quickly and often at a lower cost than other funding sources.
“People are increasingly learning that this is another option. It’s not for everybody, but it’s another option,” says Tom McDermott, chief commercial officer at Borro, a New York-based asset-backed lender that deals exclusively with luxury asset-based loans.
It’s notable that luxury asset-based lending by alternative funders is gaining ground at a time when unsecured money is so easy to come by. There are several reasons business owners are attracted to the idea of leveraging their valuables to attain cash. First off, they don’t need stellar credit or a proven track record in business to qualify. Secondly, they can typically get larger sums of money and at better rates than they might through other financing channels. A third reason is that many of them have already tapped out other funding options and leveraging their assets allows them to obtain additional funds quickly.
“A lot of small business owners have assets, so it’s something else for them to utilize in getting access to attractive small business financing,” says Steven Mandis, chairman of Kalamata Capital LLC, an alternative finance company in Bethesda, Maryland.
Here’s how the process typically works at most luxury asset-based lenders. Say a business owner wants to borrow against a high-priced item such as a top-of-the-line car, fine art or wine, jewelry or a luxury watch. First the luxury-based lender hires a third-party to appraise the item. Generally, depending on the asset and its marketability, lenders will lend 50 percent to 70 percent of the asset’s value. If the owner moves forward, the item or items are held and insured in a lender’s secure storage area until the loan is paid back. Default rates on these types of loans are relatively low, lenders say.
“People don’t want to put their house at risk when they need capital,” says McDermott of Borro. “They’d rather lose the Maserati or a lovely piece of art than the house,” he says. And even then, it doesn’t happen very often, he says. Borro clients only default on their loans about 8 percent of the time, McDermott says.
Barriers to Entry
To be certain, luxury-based lending is not a business that every funder wants to be in. For starters, there are a lot of regulatory hoops a funder has to jump through in order to do it. You need a pawnbroker’s license and a second-hand dealer license. You also need a secure facility or facilities to house the collateral, have secure ways of transporting the valuables, and you need to carry large amounts of insurance for the transfer of the items as well as during the holding period.
Indeed, keeping the items secure is critical. PledgeCap, a Lynbrook, New York-based funder, says on its website that it uses “cutting edge technology, top of the line bank vaults and armed guards” to keep a customer’s items safe. What’s more, all items are insured during transit and storage. All items are shipped through secured and insured FedEx shipping vendors for pickups and drop-offs.
“There aren’t a lot of players in the market because there are a lot of operational and legal requirements to adhere to. There are a lot of barriers to entry,” says Gene Ayzenberg, the company’s chief operating officer.
Putting Things in Perspective
Luxury asset-based lending is only a small subset of the overall asset-based lending market, which as a whole has been gaining ground in the past few years. After getting badly burned in the most recent recession, many lenders have come to appreciate the security blanket that collateral offers. According to the Commercial Finance Association’s quarterly Asset Based Lending Index, U.S. ABL loan commitments rose 7.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with the year-earlier period. In addition, new ABL credit commitments were 6.3% higher than the same period a year ago.
“Asset-based lending at one time used to be the lending of last resort. Now it’s the type of lending that it is accepted globally,” says Donald Clarke, president of Asset Based Lending Consultants Inc., a Hollywood, Florida-based company that provides due diligence services for lenders. “Today, everybody wants an asset.”
There’s not a lot of public data to gauge the size of the luxury market within the broader asset-based lending market. But a 2014 report that focuses on art lending gives more perspective to at least one facet of luxury asset-based lending.
Thirty six percent of the private banks polled said they offer art lending and art financing services using art and collectibles as collateral. That’s up from 27 percent in 2012 and 22 percent in 2011, according to the report by consulting firm Deloitte and ArtBanc, a company that provides art sales alternatives, valuations and collections management services.
Meanwhile, 40 percent of private banks said this would be a strategic focus in the coming 12 months, up considerably from the 13 percent who named this as a priority in 2012.
These market changes are likely driven by client demand. The Deloitte/ArtBanc survey found that 48 percent of establishes art collectors polled said they would be interested in using their art collection as collateral for a loan, up from 41 percent in 2012.
Many big banks won’t touch asset-based lending deals unless they are worth north of $5 million. Some community banks will do smaller deals, but many don’t have the necessary infrastructure or skill sets, explains Clarke, of Asset Based Lending Consultants. This, of course, leaves an opening for alternative funders to capture market share.
Luxury asset-based lending expected to experience growth
Some lenders say they expect demand for luxury asset-based loans to continue to increase over time as more people accumulate big-ticket items and they become more aware that they can satisfy their capital needs by leveraging those assets. “A lot of times they don’t even know they have this option available to them,” says Ayzenberg of PledgeCap.
He says most of his company’s customers are small and mid-size business owners. Often they have temporary cash flow issues, but bank loans aren’t necessarily an option for them for any number of reasons. For instance, some may have bad credit. Others may have excellent credit but not enough of a business track record to qualify for a bank loan. Others may not have the cash flow to secure the amount of money they need, or they may need the money very quickly. Asset-based lenders can generally make the money available within a day, whereas bank loans require a lot of paperwork and can take months to obtain.
Mandis, of Kalamata Capital, says his company has seen an increased willingness by business owners to put up their luxury assets as collateral in order to get larger amounts of money at more favorable terms. Many times business owners have a high-priced asset that they don’t want to sell and pay a tax or can’t easily unload within a short-time frame. By borrowing against the luxury asset, they will get the capital to take advantage of a short-term opportunity and make an attractive return quickly without having to worry about finding a buyer or paying taxes on the sale of the asset, he explains.
Certainly luxury asset-based lending is not for every customer. Not only do you have to have a valuable asset to be used as collateral, but you also have to be willing to part with the item while the loan is outstanding. The risk of default and not getting the item back may also be a barrier for some people.
“I would be very hesitant to put up my wife’s diamond ring for my business. I don’t think it’s typically someone’s first choice,” says Ami Kassar, chief executive and founder of Multifunding LLC, a company in Ambler, Pennsylvania that helps small businesses find the best loan for their business. He remembers considering this option for a client only once in the past several years and the client ultimately chose another funding source.
But companies that focus on luxury asset-based lending say there is a viable market for their services that will continue to grow as more people hear about it and use it successfully to fulfill their funding needs. People have been taking their small items to pawn shops for many years. Working with a licensed lender to leverage their larger and often more expensive items gives them an option they may not have had previously. “You can’t just drive a tractor into a local pawnshop and say, ‘Here just put this in your safe,’” says Ayzenberg of PledgeCap.
Also, unlike pawn shops, luxury asset-based lenders say they aren’t looking to sell the items to make a quick buck and will only sell the item as a last resort if a customer defaults and they can’t reach agreeable terms. “We want them to keep their items,” says Ayzenberg whose company has been in business since 2013. For every 100 loans, there are only a small percentage of customers that default and lose the items, he says.
Every lender runs their business slightly different. At Borro, for example, loans typically range between $20,000 and $10 million and span in time frame from three months to three years. Rates start in the mid-teens and are based on the size of the loan, the time frame and how easy the asset would be to sell. In order to work with Borro, the asset typically has to be worth more than around $40,000, McDermott says.
Borro, which has been in business since 2009, deals with customers directly. But it also gets a good number of referrals from other lenders. Let’s say a customer needs $500,000 and a particular lender can only offer a maximum of $350,000. That lender might refer the client to Borro, which kicks in $150,000 based on the value of a leveraged asset. The referring company gets a commission based on the loan value and doesn’t lose the whole deal. “It’s a way to keep your customers tied in with you,” McDermott says, adding that Borro has no intention of getting into other types of lending. “We complement each other. We don’t compete.”
PledgeCap also focuses exclusively on asset-based lending. The company typically funds loans between $1,000 and $5 million. The length of each loan is four months. Customers don’t have to pay every month, though most do. For every month the loan is outstanding customers pay a rate of 3 percent on average. Other fees, payable at the end of the loan, are assessed based on costs PledgeCap incurs and depend on factors such as the cost of insurance, the appraisal fee and the cost of transporting the item to the secure facility.
By contrast, Kalamata Capital, which has been in business since 2013, offers asset-backed loans in connection with several other small business financing options—such as working capital loans, SBA loans, lines of credit, merchant cash advance and invoice factoring—to give customers more flexibility in terms of rates.
In Kalamata’s case, it will evaluate the cash flow and other assets of a small business for financing options. Kalamata then combines both the amount it would lend against an asset and the amount it would lend to the small business, possibly giving the business a lower rate—and more options—in the process.
While it’s not a type of funding that works for everyone, Mandis, the chairman of Kalamata, expects to see continued growth in this area. “I don’t think the loan market for luxury assets is as large as many of the traditional small business finance areas, but it is something that can be helpful to small business owners,” he says.
Alternative Business Funding’s Decade Club
October 22, 2015
The working capital business is a very different animal now than it was a decade or so ago when many of today’s established players were just starting out.
“At that time, the industry was a bunch of cowboys. It was an opportunistic industry of very small players,” says Andy Reiser, chairman and chief executive of Strategic Funding Source Inc., a New York-based alternative funder that’s been in business since 2006. “The industry has gone from this cottage industry to a professionally managed industry.”
Indeed, the alternative funding industry for small businesses has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. To put it in perspective, more than $11 billion out of a total $150 billion in profits is at risk to leave the banking system over the next five plus years to marketplace lenders, according to a March research report by Goldman Sachs. The proliferation of non-bank funders has taken such a huge toll on traditional lenders that in his annual letter to shareholders, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer Jamie Dimon warned that “Silicon Valley is coming” and that online lenders in particular “are very good at reducing the ‘pain points’ in that they can make loans in minutes, which might take banks weeks.”
The burgeoning growth of alternative providers is certainly driving banks to rethink how they do business. But increased competition is also having a profound effect on more seasoned alternative funders as well. One of the latest threats to their livelihood is from fintech companies, like Lendio and Fundera,for example, that are using technology to drive efficiency and gaining market share with small businesses in the process.
“Established lenders who want to effectively compete against the new entrants will need to automate as much decisioning as possible, diversify acquisition sources and ensure sufficient growth capital as a means to capture as much market share as possible over the next 12 to 18 months,” says Kim Anderson, chief executive of Longitude Partners, a Tampa-based strategy consulting firm for specialty finance firms.
Of course, there is truth to the adage that age breeds wisdom. Established players understand the market, have a proven track record and have years of data to back up their underwriting decisions. At the same time, however, experience isn’t the only factor that can ensure a company will continue to thrive over the long haul.
WORKING TOWARD THE FUTURE
Indeed, established players have a strong understanding of what they are up against—that they can’t afford to live in the glory of the past if they want to survive far into the future.
“With every business you have to reinvent yourself all the time. That’s what a successful business is about,” says Reiser of Strategic Funding. “You see so many businesses over the years that didn’t reinvent themselves, and that’s why they’re not around.”
Strategic Funding has gone through a number of changes since Reiser, a former investment banker, founded it with six employees. The company, which has grown to around 165 employees, now has regional offices in Virginia, Washington and Florida and has funded roughly $1 billion in loans and cash advances for small to mid-sized businesses since its inception.
One of the ways Strategic Funding has tried to distinguish itself is through its Colonial Funding Network, which was launched in early 2009. CFN is Strategic Funding’s secure servicing platform which enables other companies who provide merchant cash advances, business loans and factoring to “white label” Strategic Funding’s technology and reporting systems to operate their businesses.
“When you’re in a commodity-driven business, you have to find something to differentiate yourself,” Reiser says.
FINDING WAYS TO BE DIFFERENT
That’s exactly what Stephen Sheinbaum, founder of Bizfi (formerly Merchant Cash and Capital) in New York, has tried to do over the years. When the company was founded in 2005, it was solely a funding business. But over the years, it has grown to around 170 employees and has become multi-faceted, adding a greater amount of technology and a direct sales force. Since inception, the Bizfi family of companies has originated more than $1.2 billion in funding to about 24,000 business owners.
Earlier this year, the company launched Bizfi, a connected online marketplace designed specifically to help small businesses compare funding options from different sources of capital and get funded within days. Current lenders on the platform include Fundation, OnDeck, Funding Circle, CAN Capital, SBA lender SmartBiz, as well as financing from Bizfi itself. Financing options on the platform include short-term funding, equipment financing, A/R financing, SBA loans and medium term loans.
Sheinbaum credits newer entrants for continually coming up with new technology that’s better and faster and keeping more established funders on their toes.
“If you don’t adapt, you die,” he says. “Change is the one constant that you face as a business owner.”
David Goldin, chief executive of Capify, a New York-based funder, has a similar outlook, noting that the moment his company comes out with a new idea, it has to come up with another one. “If you’re not constantly innovating you’re in trouble,” he says. “It’s a 24/7 global job.”
Capify, which was known as AmeriMerchant until July, was founded by Goldin in 2002 as a credit card processing ISO. In 2003, the company began focusing all of its efforts on merchant cash advances. Four years later, the company made its first international foray by opening an office in Toronto. The company continued to expand its international presence by opening up offices in the United Kingdom and Australia in 2008. The company now has more than 200 employees globally and hopes to be around 300 or more in the next 12 months, Goldin says. The company has funded about $500 million in business loans and MCAs to date, adjusted for currency rates.
THE CULTURE OF CHANGE
Five or six years ago, Capify’s main competitors were other MCA companies. Now the competition primarily comes from fintech players, and to keep pace Capify has made certain changes in the way it operates. From a human resources standpoint, for instance, Capify switched from business casual attire to casual dress in the office. The company has also been doing more employee-bonding events to make sure morale remains high as new people join the ranks. “We’ve been in hyper-growth mode,” he says.
CAN Capital in New York, another player in the alternative small business finance space with many years of experience under its belt, has also grown significantly (and changed its name several times) since its inception in 1998. The company which began with a handful of employees now has about 450 and has offices in NYC, Georgia, Salt Lake City and Costa Rica. For the first 13 years, the company focused mostly on MCA. Now its business loan product accounts for a larger chunk of its origination dollars.
This year, the company reached the significant milestone of providing small businesses with access to more than $5 billion of working capital, more than any other company in the space. To date, CAN Capital has facilitated the funding of more than 160,000 small businesses in more than 540 unique industries.
Throughout its metamorphosis to what it is today, the company has put into place more formalized processes and procedures. At the same time, the company has tried very hard to maintain its entrepreneurial spirit, says Daniel DeMeo, chief executive of CAN Capital.
One of the challenges established companies face as they grow is to not become so rule-driven that they lose their ability to be flexible. After all, you still need to take calculated risk in order to realize your full potential, he explains. “It’s about accepting failure and stretching and testing enough that there are more wins than there are losses,” says DeMeo who joined the company in March 2010.
ADVICE FOR NEWCOMERS
As the industry continues to grow and new alternative funders enter the marketplace, experience provides a comfort level for many established players.
“The benefit we have that newcomers don’t have is 10 years of data and an understanding of what works and what doesn’t work,” says Reiser of Strategic Funding. With the benefit of experience, Reiser says his company is in a better position to make smarter underwriting decisions. “There are many industries we funded years back that we wouldn’t touch today for a variety of reasons,” he says.
Experienced players like to see themselves as role models for new entrants and say newcomers can learn a lot from their collective experiences, both good and bad. Noting the power of hindsight, Reiser of Strategic Funding strongly advises newcomers to look at what made others in the business successful and internalize these best practices.
One of the dangers he sees is with new companies who think their technology is the key to long-term survival. “Technology alone won’t do it because that too will become a commodity in time,” he says.
Over the years Strategic Funding has learned that as important as technology is, the human touch is also a crucial element in the underwriting process. For example, the last but critical step of the underwriting process at Strategic Funding is a recorded funding call. All of the data may point to the idea that a particular would-be borrower should be financed. But on the call, Strategic Funding’s underwriting team may get a bad vibe and therefore decide not to go forward.
“We look at the data as a tool to help us make decisions. But it’s not the absolute answer,” Reiser says. “We are a combination of human insight and technology. I think in business you need human insight.”
Seasoned alternative funding companies also say that newbies need to implement strong underwritingcontrols that will enable them to weather both up and down markets.
The vast majority of newcomers have never experienced a downturn like the 2008 Financial Crisis, which is where seasoned alternative financing companies say they have a leg up. Until you’ve lived through down cycles, you’re not as focused as protecting against the next one, notes Sheinbaum of Bizfi. “Every 10 years or 15 years or so, there seems to be a systemic crisis. It passes. You just have to be ready for it,” he says.
Goldin of Capify believes that many of today’s start-ups don’t understand underwriting and are throwing money at every business that comes their way instead of taking a more cautious approach. As a funder that has lived through a down market cycle, he’s more circumspect about long-term risk.
One of the biggest problems he sees is funders who write paper that goes two or three years out. His company is only willing to go out a maximum of 15 months for its loan product, which he believes is s a more prudent approach. He questions what will happen when the economy turns south—as it eventually will—and funders are stuck with long dated receivables. “You’re done. You’re dead. You can’t save those boats. They are too far out to sea,” Goldin says.
Having a solid capital base is also a key to long-term success, according to veteran funders. Many of the upstarts don’t have an established track record and need to raise equity capital just to stay afloat—an obstacle many long-time funders have already overcome.
Goldin of Capify believes that over time consolidation will swallow up many of the newbies who don’t have a good handle on their business. Hethinks these companies will eventually be shuttered by margin compression and defaults. “It can’t last like this forever,” he says.
In the meantime, competition for small business customers continues to be fierce, which in turn helps keep seasoned players focused on being at the top of their game. Getting too comfortable or complacent isn’t the answer, notes DeMeo of CAN Capital. Instead, established funders should seek to better understand the competition and hopefully surpass it. “Competition should make you stronger if you react to it properly,” he says.
