Business Lending
Brokers: It’s Okay To Delay Starting A Family
December 25, 2015
WE HAVE NO “MINIMUM” GUARANTEE
The debate to increase the minimum wage across the board in the US to $15 per hour has been going on for quite some time now, with marches in the street from fast food workers, people protesting by walking off the job, and strong political debate with passionate views on both sides.
What’s been strange to me about this debate, in relation to the argument of those that are in favor of increasing the minimum wage, is their reference to workers being “slave labor” by working excessively hard and long, but not making enough in a lot of cases to support a household. The reason this has been strange to me is because for close to 9 years, I operated on a 1099, independent, 100% commission basis, as a solopreneur managing my own one man show sales office. I received no salary, base pay, hourly pay, “floor”, nor company benefits (even though I am fully insured individually). The Harvard Business School report from July 2014 by Karen Gordon Mills and Brayden McCarthy, said that there’s 23 million businesses in the country that do not have any employees and are classified as Solopreneurs.
So, should myself and the other 23 million Solopreneurs in this country all be marching and protesting as well? And if so, marching and protesting against who? I work for 1ST Capital Loans, LLC, but I’m also the sole managing director, member and employee of said entity, so as a result, I should be marching and protesting against myself? We as independent brokers have no minimum guarantee or minimum wage, which not only makes the minimum wage debate strange, but it also points to another reality in that adding a family to our chaotic situation might not be optimal at this time.
RUNNING YOUR OWN SHOP IS VERY DIFFICULT
Running your own show is probably the hardest job you will ever have in your life. Having to juggle the various components of it with no established “minimum wage” just chokes out far too many independent brokers. Some of those various components include but surely aren’t limited to:
- Having to manage regulations, laws and other legal aspects
- Having to manage accounting, insurance and tax related aspects
- Having to design your own business plan and ROI formulas
- Having to come up with your own way of creative financing
- Having to manage your vendor, supplier along with partner negotiations and agreements
- Having to design your market strategy, solutions and spend time actually selling them
On top of this, you might have to deal with pet peeves of your Funder and Lender Partners, which could include them cheating you out of commissions, clawing back commissions after 45 days, cutting you off from your renewal and residual portfolios, among other things. These things rob you out of the hard earned commissions for deals that you fought for in one of the most competitive markets in the country (using your own capital, creativity, time and energy) to win.
MAKE A FAMILY NOW, OR DELAY DOING SO JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER?
With all of the aspects of building your broker office that must be managed on your own, with no minimum guaranteed wage, benefits or true assistance, the next question becomes, how do you manage a family through the very early stages of all of this chaos? The reality is that there’s only so much time in the day. If you are just starting out your own shop and if you don’t currently have a present family to take care of, putting the creation of a family on hold might be your best bet. I once expressed that it was okay to be a piker, then I expressed that it was okay to be a minimalist, today I’m telling you that it’s okay to delay starting a family.
THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION FACES A LOT OF STRUCTURAL CHALLENGES
It seems as though most of the newer brokers in our space are a part of the Millennial Generation.
Generation Y (The Millennial Generation) begins usually around 1981 and lasts until about 1995, the Generation that follows (Generation Z) are those that were born just after 1995. Being a Millennial myself, I tend to keep abreast of many of the issues facing my generation, and while I currently do not have a family that I’m responsible for, I believe that many Millennials would agree that it’s seemingly more difficult today than ever before to manage a family:
- We Are Over-Educated and Under-Employed: We are in fact the most educated Generation, but some reports state that over 50% of us are under-employed, which means we are mainly a Generation of the over-educated and under-employed, saddled with student loan debt.
- Lack Of Security and Stability: Prior Generations had the luxury of working for one company, in one location and in one city, for the vast majority of their working career, and be able to retire with a pension, 401k, and strong retirement benefits from Social Security. Our Generation has no such securities, as many of us will have to change careers and work locations often during our working career, making it nearly impossible to seemingly ever purchase a home because purchasing a home only makes sense when you can estimate “staying put” in one area for at least 10 years. Also the lack of pensions, strong 401k plans, and the fact that we might not receive strong Social Security benefits further complicates the security issue.
- Our Cost Of Living Continues To Sky Rocket: From food to energy, from property taxes to rent, from insurance premiums to healthcare costs, from college tuition to day care expenses, our cost of living continues to skyrocket.
- Our Opportunities Are Being Stolen Away: Wages and business opportunities are either stagnant or flat out decreasing due to the rise of global competitive forces and IT/robotic automation stealing away our opportunities for income advancement.
So while you are trying to juggle the issues of building your broker office, you are also having to deal with competitive global forces and IT automation, along with the rising cost of living, along with deficiencies in job/income security and stability. So how in the world do you add a family of let’s say two kids on top of this chaos? Regardless of whether or not you are married or a single parent, the costs and risks of managing a family within this chaotic situation are significant.
IT’S OKAY TO DELAY STARTING A FAMILY
If you already have a family, obviously you can’t “give them back” and start over, so if you are seeking to enter this space and build your broker office, you are just going to have to find a way to juggle all of the chaos that’s present. However, if you are like me (a Millennial and Broker within this space), that hasn’t yet created a family, if you are still in the early stages of constructing your office, renewal and residual portfolios, then I would say that it’s “okay” to delay starting a family considering all of the chaotic issues that you would be facing today.
How long to delay such a very important choice is a personal one that you would have to manage, but for some of us, the choice might come down to opting out of creating a family altogether.
BizBloom Lights Up Times Square
December 24, 2015BizBloom’s “Yes, we’re local” campaign produced by industry veteran Thomas Costa is making its debut in New York City’s Times Square. Its mission, according to Costa, is to tell the story of the American Dream, particularly the struggles and accomplishments of entrepreneurs.
To do that, BizBloom intends to rely on the help of college students to interview small business owners all over the country. The stories that garner the largest social media responses will be featured in their slot airing over 43rd and Broadway. Additionally, for each story a student collects, BizBloom will donate to a special scholarship fund.
The campaign is already live and includes supporting endorsements from Quick Bridge Funding and deBanked:
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.
Brooklyn Eyeglass Merchant Defrauds Business Lenders
December 22, 2015
It’s another case of bad merchants. In this instance, Maksim Grinberg, the owner of D&M Optical and 9th Street Vision in Brooklyn have been charged with defrauding lenders out of $3.4 million. According to an article in the New York Times, Grinberg, along with two co-defendants, used false documents and guarantors to obtain numerous business loans over the last five years. He then used those funds to gamble, shop with his girlfriend, and pay his rent. The charges have resulted in a 148-count indictment filed by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson is quoted in the official report as saying, “this long-running scheme allegedly took advantage of banks and leasing companies as well as of hard-working doctors whose identities were stolen so they could be listed as loan guarantors. We investigated this brazen scam, put an end to it and will now hold those responsible accountable.”
The roster of victim lenders which included names like Wells Fargo, noticeably did not list any alternative lenders. While a UCC search revealed his D&M Optical Store used a merchant cash advance 10-years ago, Grinberg’s scam was directed at what was apparently an easier target, traditional lenders. “To secure the loans,” according to the DA’s report, “the defendants submitted fraudulent documents, including applications, lease agreements and delivery acceptance forms as well as forged signatures of loan guarantors, according to the indictment.”
It is perhaps another sign that lenders need to move away from paper statements and to tools that can be verified electronically through third parties in an automated fashion. According to the Times, the scheme only began to unravel once a guarantor whose identity had been stolen was contacted to make a payment on their $1 million loan.
World Business Lenders Rings in 2016
December 18, 2015On December 8th, World Business Lenders (WBL) wrapped up 2015 and prepared for the coming new year at their annual shareholder meeting hosted at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. The event, which was mostly restricted to company employees, referral partners and shareholders, featured some out-of-town guest speakers including BFS Capital CEO Marc Glazer and RapidAdvance Chairman Jeremy Brown.
On a panel moderated by WBL Managing Director Alex Gemici, Brown and Glazer expressed their optimism for the industry’s future, but to some extent heeded caution. Brown specifically made reference to his prediction of a bursting bubble but conceded that he might have been off by a year or two. Glazer reminded the audience that both executives had weathered the financial crisis so that they had witnessed firsthand how a recession can affect their businesses, and made them stronger because of it.
WBL CEO Doug Naidus made a similar admission in his presentation, in that he thought that the bubble of unsecured lending would burst in 2015 but that it hadn’t happened yet. Still, he thinks it’s right around the corner. One of their primary hedges against a correction is that they secure their loans against real estate. Naidus has a background in mortgage lending so it’s a market they’re familiar with.
Another one of their key strategies is the franchise model. Over the last two years, WBL has acquired commercial finance brokerages and converted them into originating houses for their collateralized loan program. It has had a really positive impact on their growth and on their margins, according to information disclosed at the event. It’s expected that they will continue to pursue more acquisitions.
The sentiment of the event was rather festive and optimistic, with WBL enjoying a positive trajectory of growth and success.
Getting a California Lender’s License
December 17, 2015Given the fact there have been a number of successful lawsuits against cash advance companies in California, many cash advance companies have decided to take a different route and get a lending license to provide loans to merchants in the state. If done correctly, this can allow companies to provide loans to merchants in California at roughly the same profit margins one could expect from a cash advance. Below I will discuss the process for obtaining a California lender’s license and some tips for making that process less painful.
To start, go to the California Department of Business Oversight and get the form titled “Application for a License Under the California Finance Lenders Law.” The application is long and detailed but don’t let that scare you. Most of the information you provide is really more related to letting the State know about your company and the main people that will be responsible for managing the lending operations. As you complete the form, one thing you do need to do is make sure you are very careful and meticulous as any small mistake will cause the application to be rejected making the process much longer.
The first part of the application requests basic information about your company and its officers. In filling out this and other parts of the application, it is essential to respond to all the questions. If you fail to miss just one response the application will be rejected. To that end, even if a question does not apply to you I find it better to respond “N/A” or “not applicable” rather than just leaving a blank. By doing that you force yourself to fill in every blank and therefore reduce the chances for missing a response resulting in a rejection of your application.
Also, you need to be very precise in your responses. I have experienced a situation where the examiner rejected an application because the name of the company was incorrectly spelled on the application. The name of the company was submitted on the application with “Inc” instead of the complete “Inc.” at the end of the company’s name. The examiners are very good at what they do and very thorough. You need to make sure the packet you submit is perfect and also that there are no inconsistencies in the document.
Another important point to remember is that the application requires you to name the person that will be responsible for running the location where the lending is occurring. The main requirement is that the person running the location must be physically present at the location. As a result, you could not manage a California office remotely from New York for instance. In another twist, if your principal location is out of state, you will need to get the license and fill out the main application for that out of state address. For the California location, you will need to fill out the short form application in addition to the main application and submit the short form application as part of the packet to allow the license to apply to the location in the state of California.
There are a number of exhibits you also have to provide as part of the process. Some of them are simple like a balance sheet for the company. It is acceptable that the company is new and has little in the way of assets. You just have to make sure you attach a balance sheet and that it is prepared in compliance with generally accepted accounting principles. I have seen times when the balance sheet was rejected because there was no line items for liabilities for instance, even though the company was new and therefore had none. It is probably wise to engage your accountant to make sure you submit a balance sheet that complies with those guidelines.
You also have to get a surety bond in the amount of $25,000. There are readily available bonding companies that specialize in providing these bonds. In addition, you need some other exhibits like a statement of good standing for your company, authorization for financial disclosure, social security number (on a separate exhibit), organizational chart and a few other documents. As with the rest of the application the key is to make sure you include everything they are asking for exactly as requested.
The most involved exhibit is the “Statement of Identity and Questionnaire.” That exhibit has to be filled out for each owner, officer and manager listed on the application. It requests detailed information going back 10 years for each person for items like residence address and work history.
In addition, there are a series of questions on topics such as whether the person has been involved in lawsuits, had any licenses revoked or declared bankruptcy. Fingerprints are also taken as part of the process. This part of the application is trying to vet the various people working for the company to make sure they are suitable to be in the lending business.
Once you have all the documents prepared, you need to put them together in a packet to send off to the Department of Business Oversight to be reviewed. Again, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to completely and accurately answer the questions and put the packet together. You need to make sure things are in the proper order and complete. Triple check the application for errors and to make sure that packet is presented in the best manner possible. You also need to determine the amount of fees to submit with the application. Then, send the package by overnight delivery to make sure you have proof of delivery.
So what happens next? Well there is usually a bit of a wait. Typically it takes 3 months or more to get a reply. If you have done your homework, you might get lucky and successfully get your license on the first try. If there are any deficiencies, you will get a response letter from the State detailing the items that need to be corrected in the application and a time frame in which you have to respond or the application is abandoned.
On the first go round, you are usually given at least 2 months so you should have plenty of time. Digest the things they want and provide the required information. The deficiency letters are very detailed so it should be easy to make the requested changes. Resubmit the requested items and wait for the next response. It could be in the form of another deficiency letter but it could be an approval of the license. Just keep on trying until you are finally successful.
That’s it, you are finally a licensed lender in California! But that is where the fun begins. You are subject to many laws in California and audits by the State. To get the right to operate as a licensed lender, you need to make sure you prepare your application correctly. Once you have done that, you need to get all your loan documents drafted in compliance with California law. Make sure you have adequate experience and professional help to take on those tasks.
Lender Or Broker – Do You Know Your Partner?
December 15, 2015I probed the audience here on deBanked a couple of times this year. Back in June 2015, I wanted to know if you knew what you were selling when it came to the merchant cash advance product? In October 2015, I wanted to know if you knew what you were buying when it came to leads versus data? So as we close out 2015 here in December, I wanted to probe the audience of deBanked once more, this time asking: do you know your partner?
THERE’S NO SLOW DOWN COMING (THE NEW ENTRANTS WILL CONTINUE TO RUSH IN)
I’ve been asked by individuals within the industry and those outside of it, on my opinion of when the mass rush of new entrants into the market will slow down. In my opinion, the Year of the Broker will not stop in 2015, but will continue into 2016 and most likely into 2017, when the chickens finally come home to roost for the new entrants, who mostly lack the leveraged networks needed to survive and thrive, and instead are relying on one or more of the following strategies which will no longer be efficient going forward:
- UCCs
- Aged Leads
- Random SIC listing calls
- Random Yellow page calls
- Parking your car down the street and randomly walking into merchant shops
- Stacking behind a 2nd position
Those who are leveraged with quality strategic partnerships, networks and access to exclusive data records, will be the ones that control the market going forward, while others will fail to remain profitable in this ever changing, integrating and evolving marketplace that we all fight tooth and nail in.
But I must ask you if you know your Partner, as this mass new entrance of players have created many documented cases of brokers having deals stolen, back-doored, commissions not paid, renewal commissions cut-off, and other unscrupulous acts. The vast majority of these documented cases are coming from broker-to-broker relationships, with one broker submitting a file to another broker, but being totally unaware of the fact that they are not working with a “direct” funder or lender.
As we go forward through our changing marketplace, where profits will get tighter, strategic partnerships will be your driving competitive advantage and where access to merchants in general from a “cold-calling” perspective will get more restrictive, you just can no longer afford to be the victim of an unscrupulous act and lose commissions. As a result, going forward, you must indeed know your partner.
THE SEVEN
The following are the seven ways that one could participate in our space:
The Referral: They are not involved in the actual sales process at all, which includes selling rates, collecting paperwork, signatures, etc. All they do is refer a person’s name, telephone number and email address, and might collect an upfront referral fee for doing so. These are usually members of a strategic partnership such as a bank, credit union, credit card processor, accounting firm, insurance firm, etc.
The Sub-Broker: They work as a broker-to-a-broker, going out and doing all of the activity involved with the sales process and submitting the package to a broker, who will then submit it to a couple of funders to “close” the deal. They would then be paid a portion of the commission that the broker gets from the funder or lender once the deal funds, so if the broker gets 6 points, the sub-broker might get 2 or 3 points. Sometimes these individuals (sub-brokers) are willingly signing up for this arrangement, and sometimes they are unwillingly signing up by believing the broker is an actual direct funder or lender, when they are not. This leads to a majority of the issues I’ve identified such as having deals stolen, deals back-doored, commissions not paid, renewal commissions cut-off, and other unscrupulous acts.
The Broker: They go out and do all of the activity involved with the sales process and submit the package to a funder or lender, then manages certain aspects of the closing process such as getting additional signatures, questions answered, stips collected, etc. They would then be paid the commission they set on the deal by marking up the funder or lender’s buy-rate. So if the buy-rate is a 1.12 for a 6 month period, and they marked it up to 1.18, they would be paid 6 points on the deal.
The Syndicate: They would basically do everything a Broker would do, but for some deals they will put some of their own capital resources on the line through syndication, it might be their own equity sources or they might use debt sources such as those from credit card no interest promo deals. The syndication process just allows them to take more money home on the deal.
The Direct Funder/Lender: They have built their own underwriting platform and formulas to lend out either merchant cash advances and/or alternative business loans with a focus on a certain level of profitability and to maintain a certain default rate threshold.
The All-In-One: This is a firm that basically is structured as a direct funder/lender, but they also broker out some deals and on those deals that are brokered out, some of them include the firm syndicating to increase their take home revenue on the deal in particular.
The Investor: This is an equity or debt source that invests capital into a direct funder/lender’s underwriting platform and formula, seeking to capitalize on the high profits that result from a merchant successfully paying back either a merchant cash advance or an alternative business loan.
KNOW A DIRECT FUNDER/LENDER WHEN YOU SEE ONE
When I first started reselling the merchant cash advance and alternative business loan products in late 2009, I noticed that one of the ways to differentiate yourself in the market was to say that you were a “direct funder”, apparently the mentality was that merchants only wanted to talk to the people who could actually do the lending.
Well, I preferred to just admit upfront to merchants that I was a broker, but just explain that the industry is complicated in terms of the pricing models that are present. If you qualify for A+ Paper pricing, you want to make sure you are submitting your package to an A+ Paper lender, otherwise, you might be a merchant with a 700 FICO, clean banks, no liens, and other A+ Paper like qualifications, but might be submitting your package to a funder that will only spit out 6 month offers at 1.35 factor rates. So if you are seeking to work with a direct funder/lender (even if they also syndicate or broker on the side), you just have to know one when you see one, by using some of the following rules of thumb:
- Licensure: Look for some type of state licensure or registration. You can usually find this out by asking the firm their corporate legal name and research this in the state database of where they are incorporated or other states of where they do business.
- Track Record: Look for a proven track record, which means they should have funded at least $10 million in volume and have in business at least 12 – 24 months.
- Fully Staffed: Look for a full office staff, by the firm being very small, this is how your deals end up getting lost, stolen, or the underwriting process drags on for seemingly forever.
- Online Identity: Look for a professionally designed website with a business email address. In addition, look for some type of online press release about the shop opening, a media interview, or news release about an equity or debt financing round. Look up the principals on LinkedIn, and the company should come up on Google as well as other online directory listings including the Better Business Bureau. If you can’t find anything about the company or the principals online in some sort of professional listing and/or publicity based format, I would move on.
THE FINAL WORD
I don’t think there’s a worse feeling one can have, to have gone through the process of spending money to generate a qualified lead, to “close” that lead by getting them to send you an application package, and then to submit the package to your supposed “funder”, only to have the deal stolen and back-doored because your supposed “funder” was nothing but an unscrupulous broker the entire time.
Making sure you select good partners is vital to your survival on this battlefield called “alternative lending”, a battlefield that we fight, scratch, and claw on daily to feed ourselves, our families, and help make the lives of small business owners more efficient than before we got here.
CAN Capital: Beyond Hyperbole
December 11, 2015
It’s usually risky to say “first,” “largest” or “best,” but CAN Capital invites those superlatives and more.
Asked whether the company’s the biggest in the alternative funding business, CEO Dan DeMeo hedges only a little with qualifiers like “might” or “probably” before proudly announcing that the company has provided access to more than $5.5 billion in working capital through 163,000 fundings to merchants operating in over 540 different kinds of businesses.
Glenn Goldman, the company’s CEO from 2001 to 2013 and now Credibly’s chief executive, doesn’t mince words about his former employer when he calls CAN Capital the biggest and most profitable small business alternative finance company in the U.S.
Cofounder and Chairman Gary Johnson proclaims without hesitation that CAN Capital was the first alternative small business finance company. His wife and cofounder, Barbara Johnson, came up with the idea of the Merchant Cash Advance in 1998 when she had trouble raising funds to promote her business, he said.
CAN Capital developed the first platform to split card receipts between the merchant and funder, and it gave birth to the idea of daily remittances, Johnson continued. Within a few years of its founding the company was turning a profit, another first in alternative finance, he claimed.
The innovation continued from there, according to Andrea L. Petro, executive vice president and division manager of Lender Finance, a division of Wells Fargo Capital Finance. She cited a couple of possible firsts she’s witnessed in her dealings with CAN Capital.
When CAN Capital received a loan from Wells Fargo in 2003, it may have been the first sizeable placement in the alternative finance industry by a major traditional financial institution, Petro said. In 2010, CAN Capital was among the first alternative funders to offer direct loans, she noted.
Petro stopped short of characterizing CAN Capital as the best in the alternative finance business, but she praised the company’s management and lauded its systems for underwriting and monitoring funding. “They continually upgrade their systems, upgrade their software, upgrade their people,” she said.
Calling CAN Capital one of the best comes naturally to Kevin Efrusy, a partner at Accel Partners and a CAN Capital board member. Accel saw opportunity in alternative finance because banks were reluctant to lend at the same time that an explosion of data on small businesses was informing the underwriting process. When Accel sought a position in the industry, it contacted CAN Capital, he said.
“Frankly, CAN Capital didn’t need or want our money,” Efrusy said. “We approached them.” Five years ago, Accel convinced CAN Capital that additional resources could help the company grow, and it bought a stake in the company.
With so many extolling the virtues of CAN Capital, deBanked asked DeMeo for a look at the thinking that underlies the success.
PLOTTING STRATEGY
CAN Capital pursues a strategy that DeMeo visualizes as a honeycomb. In the center cell, he places the objective of “helping small businesses succeed.” The compartmental element above that provides a place for the goal of serving as “the preferred provider of financial solutions to small business,” he said. The company’s cultural values, summarized as “Care, Dare and Deliver,” reside in the compartment below the center cell as table stake underpinnings, he added.
DeMeo also describes the company as driven by four strategic planks: “1) Expand the market, 2) broaden the product set, 3) deepen relationships with customers, and 4) achieve operating excellence,” he said.
What does success look like to the company? To DeMeo, it’s dramatic growth in the number of customers, resulting in increased revenue, a more valuable company and better career opportunities. “Digital automation and customer experience are at the center of those efforts,” he said.
CAN Capital operates with a “huge appetite for ‘test and learn,’” according to DeMeo. “That’s how we keep innovation alive,” he said.
And the result of all that? The company has increased fundings by 29 percent (CAGR) and revenue by 24 percent (CAGR), with corresponding growth in earnings, DeMeo said. It has also grown its digital business by 600 percent since 2014, he noted.
AT THE WHEEL
DeMeo, the man at the top of CAN Capital, joined the company in 2010 as chief financial officer and became CEO early in 2013. He was previously CFO at 1st Financial Bank, and also served as CFO for JP Morgan Chase’s consumer and small business unit. DeMeo also was chief marketing officer and ran business development head for GE Capital’s consumer card unit. His career began at Citibank, where he held senior roles in marketing and customer analytics.
“I was very fortunate to work for some pedigree companies earlier in my career,” DeMeo said. “Those companies emphasized market based training and development, and I worked with very smart and hardworking people. I also had great experience in unsecured lending.” His formative years left him with great appreciation for “behavioral analytics and the quantitative, information-based approach to business finance.”
Experience convinced him, as a CEO, the importance of attention to the balance sheet and income statement. It’s vital to combine that with innovation and growth orientation, DeMeo said. He seeks to lead, inspire and motivate employees, he emphasized.
DeMeo grew up in Atlantic City, NJ, with parents who valued hard work, education and maximizing opportunity. His wife and three children have supported him in his career despite the long hours and dedication necessary for success.
At CAN Capital DeMeo has faced the challenge of managing the business through internal and external cycles. Running the company often comes down to balancing what customers want with what makes economic sense, he said. “Pigs eat, and hogs get slaughtered,” he maintained. “You can’t get too greedy.”
DeMeo runs the company without the help of a President or Chief Operating Officer. While DeMeo serves as the public face of the company, he also devotes himself to every aspect of operations, he said.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Although CAN Capital’s drive for technological innovation and its measured approach to fundings have remained constant, the company has renamed itself several times to fit changing times.
In November 2013, it rebranded itself publicly as CAN Capital, and the company now provides access to business loans through CAN Capital Asset Servicing Inc, and Merchant Cash Advances through CAN Capital Merchant Services.
With the CAN Capital rebranding, it dropped the umbrella name of Capital Access Network. At the same time, it retired the AdvanceMe, New Logic Business Loans and CapTap names.
Most of the company’s old names applied to products or distribution channels, DeMeo said. The company had added them when it presented a new product, such as loans, or introduced a way of going to market, like end-to-end digital technology.
Consolidating the names reflected the company’s decision to put its direct marketing efforts on equal footing with business generated by partner companies, DeMeo said. Having just one name would result in a more efficient approach to building a stronger brand, he noted.
“The opportunity is to create one brand, multiple products and omni channel distribution under one company,” he said. “For a company our size, it would be hard to create brand awareness if you had to put significant promotional support behind every one of those sub brands.”
CAN Connect is a sub-brand that has survived. “That’s not a product name or distribution channel name,” DeMeo said. “It’s the technology suite we use to connect with partners so that we can exchange information in real time.”
CAN Connect is a way to speed up the process and eliminate friction for customers and partners. For example, a partner is able to link their CRM directly into CAN Capital’s decision engine, eliminating manual steps in submitting and generating offers. For partners with a customer-facing portal, CAN Connect enables an offer to be made available in real time to a small business owner, taking advantage of data sharing APIs to tailor the marketing message to fit the prospective customer’s needs.
Attention to detail pays off in repeat business for CAN Capital, in DeMeo’s view. “Almost 70% of our merchants return for another contract,” he said
THE GENESIS
By all accounts, CAN Capital is a company born of necessity. Barbara Johnson, who had the brainstorm that became CAN Capital, was running four Gymboree playgroup franchises in Connecticut and needed funds to finance summertime direct marketing efforts for fall enrollment.
But her company didn’t have much in the way of assets to pledge, so banks weren’t interested in providing funds. Why, she reasoned, couldn’t she just borrow or receive an advance against the credit card receipts she knew would flow in when the kids came back in the autumn? Thus, she gave birth to an industry.
Barbara Johnson and her husband, direct marketing executive Gary Johnson, cofounded the company as Countrywide Business Alliance and put up their own money to build a computerized platform to split card revenue, Gary Johnson said.
Then they persuaded a card processor to partner with them. Once they were operating and had signed their first customer, venture capital began flowing their way to grow the business. These days, the Johnsons remain major shareholders.
“What made it an interesting concept was how huge the market potential was,” Gary Johnson said. “That’s what the attraction still is today.” Although Merchant Cash Advances may now seem commonplace, they were startling at first, he said. “When we first went out in the marketplace, everybody thought it was a crazy idea,” he noted.
The company earned patents on processing related to Merchant Cash Advances and daily remittances, Gary Johnson said. At first, the patents deterred potential competitors from entering the business, but the company was unable to defend the patents successfully in court. Rivals then entered the fray.
Just the same, the company became profitable early on through “deliberate decision-making, having the right people in place and being bigger than everybody else,” he said.
Much of the company’s early business came through firms that provide merchants with transaction services, and that remains the case today, DeMeo said. Many were placing point of sale terminals in stores and restaurants to accept credit cards, and working capital became an upsell or cross-sell, he noted.
The large base of business CAN Capital built with merchant services companies means it will always be an important channel for the company. Recently, new merchant sign-ups have come from more diverse channels, including cobranded and referral partners, and the fast-growing direct marketing channels.
From the beginning, the merchants receiving capital used it to grow their businesses, DeMeo said. “That feeds the whole economic system and creates jobs,” he said.
TODAY’S NUTS AND BOLTS
Daily remittances give CAN Capital nearly constant insight into how well customers are performing, which enables the company to discover potential issues quickly and take action. Such close monitoring also provides the company with enough information to enable funding opportunities that competitors might pass up, DeMeo said.
“The basis for our decisions is how the business performs and business-specific indicators, such as capacity and consistency, versus looking at the personal credit history of the business owner,” DeMeo noted.
Having that data also helps the company create models it can use to serve other businesses in the same classification, DeMeo said. “It’s poured into machine learning for future decisioning,” he maintained. “It’s a cool concept, right?”
The company’s 450 or so employees work in several locations. Three hundred of the total are attached to the office in Kennesaw, GA, the region where the company first set up operations. To this day, that’s where the company conducts most of its business, DeMeo said.
About 25 employees work in technology and operating support in offices in Salt Lake City because the area offers a strong talent pool and provides the company with additional time zone coverage, DeMeo said.
Some of the company’s former executives came from Western Union, which had a presence in Costa Rica. About a hundred employees are now stationed there, working on technology, maintenance and development. That location also houses back-office redundancy for the company, too.
On Manhattan’s 14th Street, the company has 30 or so employees, who include digital engineers, marketing and business development teams, the human resources lead, the chief financial officer, the chief legal officer, and the chief executive officer. The company moved its executive office there from Scarsdale, NY to take advantage of the digital boom, he said, adding that, “Google’s right around the corner.”
Compared with most companies in alternative finance, CAN Capital has little venture capital as part of its ownership structure, DeMeo said. “It’s a self-sustaining business. We’re not forced to approach the capital market to cover our burn rate. We’re cash-flow positive.” Competitors have to borrow to fund their growth, he noted.
The company has taken on infusions of debt financing, not equity financing. In the latter, a company is selling part of itself, DeMeo said. “We raised $650 million from a syndicate with five new banks and 10 banks in total.” The company completed a securitization of $200 million the year before, he said.
CAN Capital recently introduced the new TrakLoan product that has no fixed maturity date, with daily payments that are based on a fixed percentage of card receipts. This way, payments ebb and flow with the merchant’s card sales. CAN Capital is also testing “bank-like” installment loans of as much as $500,000 with a payback period of up to four years.
And there’s nowhere to go but up, in the view of CAN Capital executives. With a market of 28 million small American merchants and penetration of between 5 and 10 percent, they see plenty of potential to keep earning superlatives.
