Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.
Articles by Sean Murray
Can an ISO “Excel” in 2016?
August 26, 2016
Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s too hard for a commercial finance broker to make a buck in exchange for honest work these days. One ISO in lower Manhattan is seeing more opportunity than ever before. Chad Otar, a managing partner of Excel Capital Management, sat down with deBanked to make his case for a bright future.
“As long as there’s small businesses, there’s always going to be opportunity,” Otar said. “Business owners are always going to need money.” Ironically, his own company that he cofounded in 2013 with hometown friend Nathan Abadi, was formed without any outside debt. Bootstrapped even to this day and even as they’re expanding, they’ve seen firsthand what other businesses around the country have to go through to get ahead.
“We’ve always believed in the products that we’ve sold,” said Otar, who brokers merchant cash advances, business loans, SBA loans, factoring products and more. They want every deal to help their clients whether it’s big or small, explaining further that even he himself has to feel comfortable with what the merchant wants. When asked about size, Otar said the largest SBA loan they got done was for $4.9 million.
But when questioned if more merchants were moving towards factoring and other traditional products, he explained that some merchants just don’t want to deal with the hassle of something that might be overly invasive or a process that might take a long time. They just want to get funded quickly, he said. And that’s where they come in.
Otar and Abadi’s optimism is not just anecdotal. The two partners, who previously renewed one year leases for their small office on Maiden Lane, saw enough runway to recently sign a five year lease for a 2,700 sq ft. office on Greenwich Street, staying within the bounds of the city’s financial district. Between full time employees and contractors, they currently house about fifteen people in their new office.
Though the partners live in Brooklyn, they, like many other companies in the industry, believe a Manhattan headquarters makes the most sense. “Everything is here,” Otar said. It’s easier to recruit new hires, he explained. And they indeed have immediate hiring plans now that they’ve got the space for it, both in sales and operationally.
This new up-and-coming generation of business owners is very comfortable with the Internet and technology, Otar added, speeding up the process and allowing they and the funding partners they work with to do more deals together. One example offered was a small business owner who gave a guided tour of his establishment to an underwriter using FaceTime on his phone. Normally, the process would’ve been delayed by a few days because of the time it takes to hire a third party to perform a site inspection.
Some funding partners offer DocuSign so that merchants don’t even have to spend time printing and signing documents anymore, he said, qualifying that however by adding that while some merchants love it, others hate it and feel more comfortable doing things the old fashioned way. He acknowledged that was likely due to the generational gap that still exists.
When asked if the setbacks and gloom that had begun to envelop the consumer lending side of fintech, was also affecting the commercial side, Otar said he didn’t see it. Funders are still very aggressive with approvals and terms, he said. While paperwork required for approval is declining overall, he described one obstacle that he hadn’t really dealt with in previous years, UCC filings that are accidentally left active even when the agreements are satisfied in full.
Underwriters doing due diligence might interpret active UCCs to mean that outstanding obligations still exist. Absent a formal termination of the UCC, an underwriter may request that merchants provide documents from the secured party to support that a termination should’ve been filed. This in itself is not a burdensome task but Otar said he has seen merchants who have used alternative financing products continuously over the last eight years or so, who are then challenged to produce satisfaction letters from dozens of companies, some of whom the merchant may only vaguely remember.
But he is not discouraged when new challenges come up. “We’ve been constantly learning,” he said. And when asked what their secret to success has been up until this point, “It’s hard work and dedication,” he responded.
LendIt’s Peter Renton is Still Earning 8.72%
August 25, 2016
LendIt, speaking to LendIt USA 2016 conference in San Francisco, California, USA on April 11, 2016. (photo by Gabe Palacio)
LendIt Conference founder Peter Renton made more from his marketplace lending investments in the last twelve months than some people earn in a year just from their nine-to-five job. $54,936 to be exact, according to his latest blog post detailing his performance. That’s a result of investments on the Lending Club platform, Prosper, P2Binvestor (which requires you to be an accredited investor), the LendAcademy P2P Fund (which includes Funding Circle, Upstart, Lending Club and Prosper), and the Direct Lending Income Fund managed by Brendan Ross (which invests with lenders such as Quarterspot and IOU Financial).
Unsurprisingly, his business loan performance through the Direct Lending Income Fund has earned the highest yield, a TTM return of 12.77%.
While reporters and critics seem to be planning the funeral for several lending platforms, Renton remains steadfast in his optimism. “Eventually, I plan to have a diversified seven-figure portfolio made up of consumer, small business and real estate loans,” he wrote on his Lend Academy website.
Though Renton is reaping the benefits of being a platform investor, it’s the platforms themselves that may be in trouble, according to a recent op-ed by Todd Baker, a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. On American Banker, Baker wrote, “Almost all [Marketplace Lending] revenue is generated from ‘gain on sale’ fees earned from new loan sales. This dependence on origination volume and gain-on-sale margins makes MPL results exquisitely sensitive to macro and micro trends in investor demand and risk appetite.”
And if a platform isn’t sustainable, the theory is that future investment opportunities may not be as available as they have been historically.
“MPLs need to shift to a more sustainable mode — either as banks or as nonbank balance-sheet lenders — before the end of the current credit cycle brings on a real shakeout and the MPL experiment becomes a financial failure,” Baker wrote.
Renton himself acknowledged a downward trend in his yield, conceding that it may never return to previous levels. “While I would love to be earning more than 10% again I don’t expect to get back there any time soon,” Renton wrote.
He also recently rebutted a Bloomberg article that argued Lending Club was being shady with repeat borrowers.
Hillary Clinton Wants to Harness the Potential of “Online Lending Platforms”
August 24, 2016
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledged online lending on Tuesday when she published her plan to help small businesses. “Small businesses owners cite insufficient access to capital as a primary inhibitor to starting, growing, and sustaining a small business,” she asserted in a fact sheet posted to her website.
To solve that dilemma, she wants to:
- Harness the potential of online lending platforms and work to safeguard against unfair and deceptive lending practices.
- Streamline regulation and cut red tape for community banks and credit unions while defending the new rules on Wall Street.
- Give the SBA administrator the authority to continue providing 7(a) loan guarantees to small businesses if demand is higher than the yearly cap, helping even more small businesses get affordable bank loans.
- Etc.
The WSJ and other media outlets have claimed Clinton’s reference to online lending means “marketplace lending” but that appears to be an exaggeration. The two are not synonymous. One company for example that just secured a $100 million credit facility from Goldman Sachs to make more loans online is not a marketplace, but rather a balance sheet lender that helps banks make loans to their clients.
Hillary Clinton’s plan for small business growth is focused on community banks, the SBA and tax incentives. Fintech and marketplaces were not mentioned. You can read it here.
Fundation’s $100 Million Credit Facility From Goldman Sachs Is A Return To Banking
August 23, 2016
The online lending party isn’t over yet. And neither is bank lending…
Fundation, which company CEO Sam Graziano described to the WSJ as a credit solutions provider rather than a lender, has secured a $100 million credit facility from Goldman Sachs. But they are a lender, a direct small business lender in fact, that uses their own balance sheet to make loans.
Fundation is different in that they bolt their platform on top of the traditional banking system. Their partnership with Regions Bank for example, allows Regions Bank customers to apply for a Fundation loan right through the Regions.com website.
The sizable credit facility, the system it will help foster, and the name behind it further demonstrates the demise of peer-to-peer lending. “We decided to be an integrated partner of the banking system,” said Fundation’s Graziano to the WSJ in regards to the saturated environment of lending platforms.
The WSJ also reported that the firm will use the funds to make more loans to Regions bank customers as well as other community banks that they have partnered up with.
Prosper Marketplace Bitten in Q2 With Major Loss
August 17, 2016Prosper Marketplace Inc. reported a Q2 2016 loss of $35.5 million, down from a loss of only $6 million over the same period last year. While not publicly traded, the company is still required to file its results. Originations for the quarter totaled $445 million.
For comparison purposes, rival Lending Club posted an $81 million loss on $1.96 billion in originations.
Prosper incurred $14 million in expenses just from restructuring related to their downsizing and layoffs which includes the closing of their Salt Lake City office and the termination of 167 employees.
The company also used a lot of cash, finishing Q2 with only $29 million in the bank, down from $66 million at the beginning of the year. Lending Club by comparison had $573 million in the bank at the end of Q2.
According to their 10Q, “Prosper Funding saw reduced listings on the marketplace as Prosper slowed down marketing efforts to reduce demand from Borrowers and maintain marketplace equilibrium. As a result, Prosper Funding experienced a decline in administration fee revenue-related party during this period and expects a decrease in administration fee revenue-related party in the third quarter of 2016 from the third quarter of 2015.”
Meanwhile, the performance of their actual loans has remained steady. View their latest performance update HERE.
Google’s Payday Loan Ad Ban References The Truth in Lending Act (TILA)
August 15, 2016
Did the government pressure Google?
Payday loan ads have mostly disappeared from Google’s search results after they banned ads for personal loans where the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) is 36% or higher. In a May 12th post, shortly after the proposed ban was announced, I speculated that the sudden change was likely due to government intimidation, rather than the come-to-Jesus moral reckoning claimed by Google’s Director of Global Product Policy, David Graff.
Google’s official Adwords policy regarding personal loans now cites the Truth in Lending Act, hinting that compliance with the policy is really about compliance with federal law.
Advertisers for personal loans in the United States must display their maximum APR, calculated consistently with the Truth in Lending Act (TILA).
This policy applies to advertisers who make loans directly, lead generators, and those who connect consumers with third-party lenders.
The TILA regulations can be found at 12 CFR Part 1026. The description of which charges are included and excluded from the calculation of “Finance Charge” is found in Section 1026.4. The APR calculation for “Open-End Credit” is found in Section 1026.14. The APR calculation for “Closed-End Credit” is found in Section 1026.22.
The timing of this change is suspicious since just one month before Google announced the ban, the owners of an online payday loan lead aggregator were hit with a lawsuit by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Among the allegations is that the defendants ran a lead aggregation business that did not attempt to match consumers with the best loan for their needs, as consumers were led to believe by some lead generators.
“In particular, consumers are likely to be steered to lenders that charge higher interest rates than lenders that comply with state laws, that do not adhere to state usury limits, or that claim immunity from state regulation and jurisdiction,” the complaint says.
The company the defendants ran, T3Leads, was also sued by the CFPB in a separate action.
Google too, as master aggregator, arguably does not attempt to match consumers with the best loan for their needs, nor have they likely been continuously vetting their lending advertisers for legal compliance. While Google has not been sued or accused of any wrongdoing, the CFPB seemed to be laying the groundwork for such a challenge in the future. And as a blanket hedge or perhaps after a direct threat, they’re now applying certain federal loan laws as if they were already subject to them.
You can see an example of the before-and-after of Google’s search results HERE.
Square Capital Outgrows Square
August 11, 2016
You don’t need to process payments through Square anymore to get a loan from Square Capital. Restaurants that use Upserve, a restaurant payments and data analytics system, are now eligible as well.
Formerly known as Swipely, Upserve is still relatively small, with only 7,000 restaurants as customers. But it’s a milestone for Square nonetheless, whose loan program within their own ecosystem has become so successful, that they feel comfortable venturing outside of it.
“We are proud to partner with Upserve and offer loans through Square Capital to even more small businesses who traditionally face barriers when seeking access to funds,” said Jacqueline Reses, Head of Square Capital.
The move puts them on a path to truly competing with other alternative lenders such as OnDeck and CAN Capital. Loans are repaid just like they are through Square, through a percentage of each day’s card sales with the option to repay early at no additional fee.
Calling Timeout On Financial Regulations, A Pump For Trump?
August 10, 2016
Only 24% of small business owners say that Hillary Clinton is the presidential candidate that has their best interest at heart, according to a survey conducted by Capify, a business financing company based in New York. 53% selected Donald Trump.
And whatever your opinions about Trump, his proposed moratorium on new financial regulations could entice both small businesses and alternative financial companies to consider a Trump presidency.
“Under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes,” Trump said in Detroit on August 8th.
A report published by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) last month found that 20% of business owners ranked taxes as the single most important problem facing their business. Only 2% reported that financing was their top business problem.
Message received? It appears not
In states like Illinois, some legislators are focusing their efforts on finding ways to make it harder for small businesses to obtain financing, convinced that questionable lending practices are the source of their problems, not taxes. But in a call with Bryan Schneider, secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, he told deBanked that no one has complained of any small-business lending problems in Illinois to state regulators.
Regulators should not indulge in creating solutions in search of problems, Sec. Schneider cautioned. “When you’re a hammer, the world looks like a nail,” he said, suggesting that regulators sometimes base their actions on anecdotal isolated incidents instead of reserving action to correct widespread problems.
And that’s why a moratorium on financial regulations (albeit on the federal level) might also resonate with small businesses. Lawmakers don’t appear to be addressing their grievances and ironically, passing new laws that make it harder to obtain financing could potentially even exacerbate the problems they’re already vocalizing.
Small businesses seemed to have become aware of the government-as-obstructionist role however since 22% of them surveyed in the NFIB study, said that government requirements and red tape were the single most important problem they faced, more than anything else.
The Finance Side
A timeout is not a sure-fire way to woo Wall Street however, since a moratorium on federal regulations could actually serve as a hindrance for some financial companies hoping to reach some legal framework consensus down the road. Last year, Bizfi founder Stephen Sheinbaum, said that a 50-state patchwork of laws would make operating companies like his more challenging. “Personally, I’d be glad to see it on the federal level, we won’t have to deal with 50 individual states, which is more unruly,” Sheinbaum said in regards to potential regulation.
But a timeout on making any moves might indeed be in order anyway, given the questions that are being asked by some federal legislators. Last month during a hearing, Rep. David Scott asked what made business loans different from consumer loans. Parris Sanz, the Chief Legal Officer of CAN Capital, who was there testifying on behalf of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), gave his answer.
But there is a fear, just by those questions, that some legislators are still having trouble understanding the fundamentals. And that may be why a dozen trade associations and lobbying groups have formed in the last year to provide educational resources about alternative financing.
In states like Illinois, Scott Talbott, SVP of government affairs for the ETA, said they are encouraging legislators to adopt a “go-slow approach” that affords enough time to understand how the industry operates and what proposed laws or regulations would do to change that.
Keep it Simple?
With Trump, despite all his quirks, it’s possible that his ideas about a moratorium, could be a deciding factor in how small business owners and those employed by alternative financial companies vote. Lower taxes, timeout on regulations, has the potential to resonate far and wide.
60% of small business owners think that the outcome of the presidential election will have a severe impact on small businesses, according to the Capify survey. 29% said it possibly will have a severe impact. With taxes and government red tape at the top of their list of grievances, there might just be a pump for trump on both sides of the alternative finance aisle.
