Articles by deBanked Staff

Brokers: What’s Your Address and Phone Number?

Brokers, this is no joke. In eighteen days, the State of Florida will by law require that brokers disclose their actual address and phone number in advertisements that promote their services as a broker. This is because Florida’s commercial financing disclosure law added its own twist by incorporating one of DailyFunder’s original rules to its statute.

Furthermore a broker may NOT:

(1) Assess, collect, or solicit an advance fee from a business to provide services as a broker. However, this subsection does not preclude a broker from soliciting a business to pay for, or preclude a business from paying for, actual services necessary to apply for a commercial financing transaction, including, but not limited to, a credit check or an appraisal of security, if such payment is made by check or money order payable to a party independent of the broker.

(2) Make or use any false or misleading representation or omit any material fact in the offer or sale of the services of a broker or engage, directly or indirectly, in any act that operates or would operate as fraud or deception upon any person in connection with the offer or sale of the services of a broker, notwithstanding the absence of reliance by the business.

(3) Make or use any false or deceptive representation in its business dealings.

What’s the risk of non-compliance?

The Florida Attorney General has the right to commence administrative or judicial proceedings to enforce compliance with this part.

1. A violation of this part is punishable by a fine of $500 per incident, not to exceed $20,000 for all aggregated violations, arising from the use of the transaction documentation or materials found to be in violation of this part.

2. A violation of this part after receipt of a written notice of a prior violation from the Attorney General is punishable by a fine of $1,000 per incident, not to exceed $50,000 for all aggregated violations, arising from the use of the transaction documentation or materials found to be in violation of this part.

These rules were signed into law in June of this year and they apply to all deals funded starting January 1, 2024.

Full law here

Missouri Resurrects its Commercial Financing Disclosure Bill

For the third time, a commercial financing disclosure bill has been introduced in Missouri. Senate Bill 753, introduced this month, is nearly identical to SB 187 which failed to gain traction this year.

A staple of the bill is its broker licensing requirement, which would require an annual renewal. Brokers would not be able to broker any deals for Missouri merchants until they were registered.

FCC Seeks to Close the “Lead Generator Loophole” on Texts and Calls

As part of the FCC’s initiative to “combat illegal text messages” the regulator intends to require that texters and callers obtain a consumer’s prior express written consent from a single seller at a time. Specifically, the FCC is acknowledging that lead generation sites or comparison shopping sites attempt to abide by the current rules by obtaining one layer of consent that they then creatively apply as counting toward all the numerous parties they have relationships with. It’s known as the “Lead Generator Loophole.”

“Lead-generated communications are a large percentage of unwanted calls and texts and often rely on flimsy claims of consent to bombard consumers with unwanted robocalls and robotexts,” the FCC said in its proposal. Their solution? One-to-one consent.

First, the one-to-one consent must come after a clear and conspicuous disclosure to the consenting consumer that they will get robotexts and/or robocalls from the seller. “Clear and conspicuous” means notice that would be apparent to a reasonable consumer. In addition, if compliance with the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (the E-Sign Act) is required for the consumer’s signature, then all the elements of ESign must be present.”

Second, we adopt our proposal that robotexts and robocalls that result from consumer consent obtained on comparison shopping websites must be logically and topically related to that website. Thus, for example, a consumer giving consent on a car loan comparison shopping website does not consent to get robotexts or robocalls about loan consolidation.

Fortunately, the FCC spells out an example of what might be acceptable as one-to-one consent for a lead generator.

For instance, the website may offer a consumer a check box list that allows the consumer to specifically choose each individual seller that they wish to hear from. Alternatively, the comparison shopping website may offer the consumer a clickthrough link to a specific business so that the business itself may gather express written consent from the consumer directly. Our rule does not prohibit comparison shopping websites from obtaining leads through valid consent and provides multiple opportunities for responsible comparison shopping websites to obtain leads for potential callers.”

According to the National Law Review, “It has not been adopted yet but it looks like it will be in December when voted upon. It looks like the rule will become effective in or around August of 2024.”

Hiring in the B2B Finance Industry Still Challenging

“To say that hiring is a difficult process is an understatement and I think that it’s a direct reflection of the labor market and the volatility in America’s labor market right now,” said Manny Yosipov, CEO at Advanced Recovery Group. Yosipov’s company does collections in the MCA and business lending space, where like many other industries, persistently low unemployment coupled with a workforce tuned into lifestyle accommodations has made the hiring environment challenging.

“You have quality talent now that want remote work and a lot of flexibility,” said Yosipov. “I think that it’s hardest for companies that have started pre-covid, survived covid, and are now trying to grow and scale in the post covid market.”

Daniel Hye, ISO Relations Manager at Zahav Asset Management, said that if remote work wasn’t in such high demand, the open positions would have likely been filled by now. Zahav is currently looking to fill an underwiting and collections role.

“We could have already had someone, but we really don’t want remote because it makes a huge difference with the way things work,” Hye said. “Especially in our industry, everything’s about speed. You want to walk over to the underwriter or you want to turn around to the underwriter and say, ‘Hey, this deal, the ISO just called me, can we get this done? Or this was a mistake? Can you do this?’ Once it’s remote it changes the whole dynamics of how everything works.”

“I mean, remote is very preferred by a lot of people,” said Carli Bova-Chezem, Director of Human Resources at Capital Gurus, “but it’s kind of funny I talked to so many people all the time and it really isn’t for everybody. I get handfuls of people that are like, ‘I’ve been remote for the last month but I really want that camaraderie of an office and I miss being around people.’”

Capital Gurus has used a variety of sources to recruit but they’re now using an end-to-end hiring system called Breezy. Bova-Chezem said that it’s increased their application rate while streamlining the process.

“There’s a plethora of places that these applicants are coming from,” said Bova-Chezem. “Up until I’d say about a month ago, it was primarily LinkedIn, which is obviously a great resource, but we’ve gotten a lot more outreach using this new system, which has been great.”

Hye of Zahav, meanwhile, says they’ve also tried a variety of systems but that it comes down to finding job applicants with proper experience. “I think the biggest issue is being able to find someone who fits the criteria and is happy to get involved,” Hye said.