Business Lending
An ISO Brokers Main Street Deals – on Main Street
June 25, 2018
Envision a giant office filled with rows of commercial finance brokers on the phone, aggressively selling deals to faceless small town merchants. Then step into the office of Horizon Financial Group and meet brothers and business partners James and John Celifarco. The contrast could not be more striking.
The most dramatic difference between their office and that of almost every other broker, or ISO, is that you enter the office from the sidewalk. There’s no lobby and no elevator. It’s just the two brothers (plus one salesperson and one assistant) working on the other side of a glass storefront window.
The store isn’t on Madison Avenue or Rodeo Drive. It’s on a modest, roughly three-block commercial strip on Avenue S in a working class section of Brooklyn called Marine Park. There’s a deli, a pizzeria, a barbershop, a pet grooming store and a bunch of other stores that you’re likely to find on Main Street, U.S.A. In other words, Horizon Financial Group’s neighbors are the exact kind of small business owners they seek as customers. And since they opened up shop on this quaint stretch at the end of October, many of their store owner neighbors have already become customers.
“It’s a different relationship with the customer,” James said of their neighborhood clients. “You’re not on the phone. You’re face to face with these people. You’re meeting them, you’re shaking their hands, you’re getting to know them personally, which helps with the longevity of the relationship itself.”
Sitting at the glass conference table by their storefront window, James, 34, and John, 37, counted up to six clients by simply pointing out the window at other small stores across the street. Horizon Financial Group is an ISO that brokers working capital deals and does credit card processing, equipment leasing, ATM machines and commercial mortgages. (James has his New York real estate license, so he can also help local store owners buy or sell a house.) The brothers said that about 40 percent of their business is facilitating deals brought to them by other ISOs, another 40 percent comes from merchants that they find directly, and about 20 percent comes from these local customers they’ve developed from having a physical presence in the neighborhood.
“Obviously you can’t build an entire business on just these two streets,” John said, “but it’s extra business that we wouldn’t have had if we weren’t here. And when we came here, we stopped thinking ‘Who are we going to buy leads from?’ and started thinking more outside of the box.”
An example of this was their decision to approach the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce where they are now one of the chamber’s preferred vendors, which brings them business from the entire borough.
James said they’ve made contributions to the local little league and kids football, and whenever a new store opens in the area, they introduce themselves and explain what they do. It also doesn’t hurt that they grew up in Marine Park, so they already know the town pretty well. James recognized someone on the sidewalk and ran outside to say hi. It was someone who used to be a next door neighbor. There is a truly old-fashion sense of community on Avenue S.
“I buy my pizza from [the pizza store owner] and he does his credit card processing with us,” James said. “When the dry cleaner needed equipment, we got them capital, and I actually got to see the piece of equipment I helped finance. That almost never happens.”
Because there is no building guard or front desk person, customers can stop by whenever they like. As if in a sitcom, a man walked into the store saying to the brothers, “Don’t be mad at me.” It was a customer, the owner of a local paint store. “It’s not completely my fault, but I broke the phone swiper on the job.”
Reassuringly, John told him to come to his desk and he helped the customer with a replacement for a piece of credit card processing equipment.
The brothers have each been working in the small business financing industry independently for more than a decade. James established Horizon Financial Group by himself in 2009 while John was working for a different company in the credit card processing and MCA space. John joined James at Horizon Financial Group in September 2017.
John said he prefers co-leading Horizon Financial Group, itself a small business, to running a larger operation in Manhattan.
“Compared to somebody in the city with a huge rent and a huge payroll, I don’t need to do the same numbers he’s doing to end up making the same amount of money.”
John also noted that he doesn’t have to sit on a train for an hour and a half because he lives just six blocks away from the storefront office.
“A lot of people don’t like to say they’re a small company,” John said. “I couldn’t be happier that we’re a small company.”
Running a small business is familiar to the Celifarcos. Horizon Financial Group gets its name from Horizons Dance Center, a successful Brooklyn dance school founded by James and John’s mother. It has been in business for 46 years and is still going strong.
“The name is good luck,” James said.
James lives a short drive away in Rockaway with his wife and daughter. On running a small business like Horizon Financial Group, James said: “It’s also about quality of life. You don’t need to work 7 to 7. I can be on the beach with my daughter. It’s really a different approach.”
When to Hire a Collection Company
June 19, 2018
There is no rule telling a funding company at what point it should seek the help of a collection company when a client defaults on an agreement. That’s entirely up to the funding company. Some have in-house collection teams while others don’t and some go slower to approach a collection agency than others.
At 6th Avenue Capital, CEO Christine Chang said that they generally don’t use collection agencies.
“When we started 6th Avenue Capital, we had a much heavier hand,” she said. Initially, they hired an in-house collections attorney, but found that it wasn’t a very collaborative approach.
“If the first call you get is from a lawyer, you’re not going to call them back,” Chang said.
Instead, they hired an in-house Head of Collections and Chang said that has proven to be more effective.
“Now, it’s more like a call from Amanda who says ‘Mr. Smith, I see you missed a payment or two….tell us your situation and how can we help,” Chang said.
The company will occasionally hire a third party for collections, but after they have exhausted all efforts internally.
But collection agencies in the industry say that they work with some of the biggest funding companies, and at all stages of the process.
Mark LeFevre, CEO of collections firm Kearns, Brinen and Monaghan (KBM), said that his clients are not only among the top players but he also works with ISOs who have just started funding companies.
“The ones that recognize the problem early, have a better return,” he said. “The ones that kick the can down the road get a lesser return on the dollar.”
As for when LeFevre’s clients send their defaulted merchants to KBM, it varies, he said. He has one client that will send him accounts after 15 days while others will wait 90 to 120 days. He generally won’t take on defaulted accounts after 120 days, or at least will sit down with clients like these to discuss strategy.
Anh Regent, CEO of the MCA collection company, AMA Recovery Group, spoke about the value of having a merchant hear from a third party.
“There’s only so much you can do in house,” Regent said. “You need another voice. [And] when you send it to collections, the price of poker has just gone up,” meaning that the merchant feels a lot more pressure to pay.
Like KBM, Regent said that his MCA clients vary in size, from companies financing $500,000 a month to those financing $25 million a month.
Collector Says “No” to Debt Settlement Companies That Want His Data
June 19, 2018
Debt settlement companies often find their leads by scouring through UCC filings, or publicly available forms that a creditor files to give notice that it may have rights to the property of a debtor. In the case of a small business, perhaps the refrigerators in a restaurant.
“[Looking through UCC filings] is a way of getting access to businesses that obviously owe somebody some money for their business,” said Shawn Smith, founder and CEO of Dedicated Commercial Recovery, a commercial collections company in Roseville, Minnesota.
But Smith told deBanked about another approach that debt settlement companies have taken to obtain leads of struggling businesses. He said they come to him.
“Who has a ton of accounts of struggling business owners?” Smith said. “Debt collection agencies that are working on behalf of funding sources. So [we] have like a list of all lists.”
Smith said that he gets approached by debt settlement companies looking for the contact information of struggling companies.
He always says “no.”
“They’re coming to me and saying ‘Hey, you know, for any merchant you send us that’s struggling, if we start working with them to help settle their debts, we will give you a large portion of the fee we make on settling that debt,’” Smith said. “And we of course would never do that.”
Dedicated works in two areas of collections: merchant cash advance and equipment leasing. In both cases, its goal is to recoup money for its clients, either merchant cash advance companies or equipment leasing companies.
Unlike this arrangement, a debt settlement company is not hired by a funding company. Instead, according to Smith, the debt settlement company searches for a struggling company, instructs the merchant to stop paying the funder and then approaches the funder with a settlement deal for often a fraction of what the funder is entitled to under the agreed upon deal. Smith said that settlement companies almost always propose to the funder: 20 percent of the value of the deal over five years.
Smith said he does work with debt settlement companies if they approach him representing a small business that can’t pay its bills, as long as what’s offered is within the range of what the funding company client would accept. Otherwise it’s a no-go. While Smith doesn’t share the names of struggling small businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the event of repayment, he’s convinced that this happens as he continues to be approached.
Founded by Smith in 2015, Dedicated has a staff of 18.
Agency Finds Some SBA Loan Lenders in Violation of Regulation
June 18, 2018
The Small Business Administration (SBA) has a regulation for SBA loan lenders, called the “Credit Not Available Elsewhere” requirement, that requires lenders to ensure that their borrower clients are unable to obtain reasonable credit elsewhere.
According to a report published this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), over 40 percent of the SBA loan lender reviews in 2016 showed noncompliance with this requirement.
“SBA provides business loan assistance only to applicants for whom the desired credit is not otherwise available on reasonable terms from non-Federal sources,” the regulation reads.
According to a blog post published last year by Janet M. Dery, a partner at Starfield & Smith who specializes in commercial lending, the SBA’s credit elsewhere test is a very significant part of the SBA 7(a) loan program.
“Failure to comply with the SBA’s credit elsewhere requirements may subject a lender to a denial of the SBA guaranty as well as a possible enforcement action by the Office of Credit Risk Management,” Dery wrote.
Furthermore, she writes that in order to comply with the SBA’s credit elsewhere requirements, which appear on pages 83-84 of SOP 50 10 5(I), “[t]he lender must determine that: (a) The Small Business Applicant is unable to obtain the loan on reasonable terms without a Federal government guaranty, and (b) Some or the entire loan is not available from any of the following sources: i. Non-Federal sources; or ii. The resources of the applicant business.”
It’s Back to Business For Alternative Funding in Puerto Rico
June 15, 2018
Last year, alternative funding in Puerto Rico ground to a halt after the island was ravaged by two devastating hurricanes in close proximity. Now, however, the alternative funding business in Puerto Rico is getting its second wind, after a several-month hiatus.
Puerto Rico got lashed by high winds and rain from Hurricane Irma in early September 2017, causing large-scale power outages and damage. Then, about two weeks later, Hurricane Maria hit the island square on, causing even more catastrophic destruction. Millions were without power for months (thousands still are), homes were destroyed, multiple lives were lost, businesses were decimated and the island’s already shaky economy teetered on the brink of disaster.
More than half a year later, residents are still trying to pick up the pieces of the epic humanitarian crisis. Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $90 billion in damage, according to the National Hurricane Center, making it the costliest hurricane on record to strike Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The hurricane knocked out 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s power lines and destroyed its generators. Even months later, the lives of many residents are still in disarray as they wait desperately for insurance payments to materialize and get back to a semblance of their former lives. The island faces additional challenge—and uncertainty— with another hurricane season just around the corner.
In the midst of this turmoil, however, there’s a glimmer of hope for the budding alternative funding sector. Some businesses are once again seeking funds to rebuild or expand, and alternative funders are once again dipping their toes into the Puerto Rican market—albeit somewhat slowly. While some funders have exited the Puerto Rican alternative lending market, other new entrants are starting to stake a claim, citing an expected uptick in economic development that tends to follow natural disasters. Some funders also see Puerto Rico as a sweet spot because the market isn’t as mature as the U.S. and competition from other alternative funders is scant. Banks on the island aren’t always willing to provide businesses there with much- needed funds, so opportunities for non-bank funders are considered plentiful.
Businesses struggling to rebuild from the storms need more help than ever before, says Sonia Alvelo, president of Latin Financial LLC, an ISO that has been arranging funding for business owners in Puerto Rico for three years. “There is no doubt that Puerto Rico has a long, hard road ahead,” she says. But “I can assure you the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well,” she says.
Latin Financial and other ISOs and funders are back to business—courting merchants and trying to help them get back on their feet. In December, Latin Financial processed its first renewal since Maria; in January it funded its first new client since September. Latin Financial continues to arrange funding of between $500k and $1 million per month on average in Puerto Rico, after some hurricane-related downtime.
“The storm destroyed a lot, but it didn’t set the small business drive back. They’re still pushing hard and really trying to maintain and grow business,” says Brendan P. Lynch, business partner and fiancé to Latin Financial’s Alvelo.
Greenbox Capital in Miami Gardens, Fla., an early entrant to the Puerto Rican alternative funding market, has also returned to funding small businesses on the island after a few-month hiatus. The company put off new deals right before Maria hit, and as a goodwill measure suspended the payments of existing customers for 90 days. Given the extension, almost all customers were able to stay on track and the firm suffered very few losses, says Jordan Fein, the company’s chief executive. Greenbox began funding again in January, he says.
To be sure, it’s not exactly business as usual, since many businesses in Puerto Rico are still struggling, Fein says. While the situation should continue to improve, it will take time for the economy and businesses to fully recover, he says.
“They’ve come a long way since September, but they still aren’t fully back. We’re not seeing the same type of submissions that we saw before,” Fein says. Nonetheless, Fein remains positive about the market’s long-term prospects. “I think they are going to come back stronger, I really do,” he says.
To be sure, not all funders are interested the Puerto Rican market. Ripe with political uncertainty and economic instability, Puerto Rico already posed challenges that made many funders hesitant to do business there. The devastation wrought by Irma and Maria complicated matters further, and some funders pulled out of the market completely.
For others, however, the market’s still an opportune one, albeit not as stable as the U.S. market. Certainly, there are reasons for alternative funders to be optimistic. Despite its recent troubles, Puerto Rico is still considered a growth market. What’s more, with new businesses popping up in the wake of the storms, new infrastructure being instituted and businesses anxious to bounce back even bigger and better than before, some funders are striking while the iron is hot.
“This is the right time, as the island is growing,” says Paul Boxer, chief marketing officer and vice president of business development at Quicksilver Capital, a New York-based small business funder. Quicksilver funded its first deal in Puerto Rico in late April.
The company had been mulling over the possibility of doing business in Puerto Rico when an actual funding prospect arose. The company decided to give it a shot, sensing a potentially viable business opportunity. Existing businesses are rebuilding after the hurricane, there’s plenty of new business development and there’s a pressing need for new infrastructure as Puerto Rico continues to recover from the devastation, Boxer says.
Accordingly, Boxer says his company is in the process of vetting additional funding opportunities in Puerto Rico and hopes to continue growing this business in what he says is a largely untapped market. “I see it as a positive addition to what we offer, and I see a lot more opportunity in the future,” Boxer predicts.
Funding Circle Report Shows Demand for Alternative Financing
June 14, 2018
Funding Circle, together with Oxford Economics, released a report this week using data from its customers last year. Funding Circle is a business loan platform that matches small business borrowers with investors that want to lend. Some of these findings may be reflective of the broader alternative finance market.
Data from the report conveys that there is an increased appetite among small business merchants for online lending products. Of the small business customers surveyed, 70 percent did not attempt to get a bank loan before applying for an alternative loan from the Funding Circle platform. The main reason for this, cited by more than three-quarters of these customers, was a perception that the bank loan process would be too burdensome. Another nine percent skipped banks because they said they thought they would be rejected.
Of the businesses that had first approached a bank before seeking funding from Funding Circle, 50 percent said they didn’t obtain a bank loan because their application was rejected. Another 36 percent responded that the bank loan process took too long, and seven percent felt that the bank’s rates and fees were too high.
When asked about the impact of not receiving funding through Funding Circle (or we can imagine a different online funder), the most common response, given by 27 percent of respondents, was that they would have missed an opportunity. After this, 22 percent believed they would not be able to consolidate their debt and 16 percent thought that they would not have been able to achieve profit growth.
Loan volume in the U.S. rose significantly for Funding Circle last year. A total of $509 million in new loans were issued in the U.S. in 2017, an increase of 80 percent from $281 million issued the previous year.
“It has become evident that small businesses are underserved in every country we operate,” said Funding Circle co-founder and CEO Samir Desai. “From butchers and bakers, to IT consultants and accountants, these are the businesses that are creating jobs, boosting productivity and driving our economies forward. The economic impact that these businesses have had as a result of accessing finance through Funding Circle is hugely rewarding to see.”
Founded in 2010, Funding Circle has helped 40,000 small businesses find financing. The company operates in the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands.
Lending Express Opens Office in Silicon Valley
June 13, 2018
Tel Aviv-based Lending Express announced its entrance into the U.S. market yesterday. It opened an office in San Matteo, CA and has officially appointed Moshe Kazimirsky as VP of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development to support the new West Coast office.
“After the immense success we’ve had in the Australian market, we knew that our platform was ready to take on the U.S.,” said Lending Express CEO Eden Amirav.
Lending Express initially launched its business in Australia in October 2016. The company provides an online marketplace that connects merchants to alternative funders. After only a year and a half, Amirav told deBanked that Lending Express is now the largest business of its kind in Australia – even though they only set foot on the continent a month ago.
Meanwhile, Lending Express has also been operating in the U.S. for months and has already partnered with leading online lenders like OnDeck, Kabbage and Fundbox, according to Amirav. Given the company’s experience in both the Australian and American markets, deBanked asked Amirav what he thought the differences were.
“In general, they are much more similar than people think,” Amirav said. “But in the U.S., people like to look around more.”
Generally, if an Australian merchant is approved, they will move forward with the deal right away, Amirav said. Lending Express offers a myriad of products on its platform, including equipment financing, invoice funding, business line of credit and merchant cash advance.
So far, Kazimirsky, who has worked in business development for other Silicon Valley technology companies, will be the only one in the new California office. But Amirav anticipates that the office with grow. The Lending Express office in Tel Aviv has 25 employees, many of whom – namely the account managers – start their day at 3 a.m. in order to speak to their Australian and American customers in different time zones.
Lending Express uses an algorithmic system called MatchScore to pair borrowers with lenders.
Second Annual Alternative Finance Bar Association Conference Draws Lawyers from Afar
June 11, 2018
Attorneys who represent alternative finance companies congregated in New York on Friday for the second annual conference of the Alternative Finance Bar Association (AFBA.)
They came for a day of learning about the latest legal developments pertaining to alternative finance, and MCA in particular. Seminars at the conference had names like: “Credit Facilities 101: What an Alternative Finance Company Can Expect,” “Syndication Relationships: Partner? Participant? Investor?” and “Bankruptcy Developments: The Rise of the Adversary Proceeding.”
“I think it’s like heaven for a new attorney in the MCA world,” said Judith Ramos, who is Corporate Counsel at McKenzie Capital in the Miami area.
Another attorney somewhat new to the MCA space and eager to learn more was Alexis Shapiro, General Counsel at Forward Financing in Boston.
“This was one stop shopping to learn about the latest legal developments in the MCA industry,” Shapiro said.
In one seminar, called “Updates on Recent Case Law,” attorney panelists Steven Berkovitch of ABF Servicing and Adam Stein and Christopher Murray of Stein Adler Dabah and Zelkowitz, discussed the positive impact of the Pearl Beta Funding v Champion Auto Sales decision in New York. They spoke about how judges have dismissed lawsuits against their MCA clients by referencing this decision, which establishes that MCA deals are not loans.
Murray reviewed the current climate with regard to MCA cases in New York, California, Texas and Utah. And one panelist emphasized the importance of simply being knowledgeable about the industry by relating a story of an MCA defense lawyer who, when asked by a judge about the interest rate on a particular MCA deal, fumbled and gave a percentage. (MCA deals do not have interest rates given that payments are subject to change over time).
Later, Gregory Nowak, a partner at Pepper Hamilton, entertained the crowd with a few jokes before diving into the details and the risks of syndication. The conference was held at New York offices of Pepper Hamilton, with expansive views of the Hudson River.
“We are energized by the response of so many attorneys from different backgrounds in this emerging and evolving industry,” said one of founders of the AFBA, Lindsey Rohan, General Counsel at Platinum Rapid Funding Group in Long Island.
AFBA’s other founders are Kate Fisher, partner at Hudson Cook outside of Baltimore, Patrick Siegfried, Assistant General Counsel at Rapid Advance in Bethesda, MD, and Murray, attorney at Stein Adler outside of New York City.
Robert Cook, one of Hudson Cook’s founding partners, was at the conference. He told deBanked that he remembered back in 2006 when an investment bank client asked his firm to do due diligence on a merchant cash advance company.
“We didn’t know what that was,” Cook said. “The client looked around for a law firm that had experience with MCAs. They couldn’t find any. So they came back to us and said, ‘You’re going to have to learn.’”
More than a decade later, MCA is no longer so obscure and the AFBA has at least three more planned events in 2018. The next event will be a cocktail reception on October 24th.
For more information, contact: Tiffany@LRohanlaw.com
deBanked was also a sponsor of the second annual AFBA conference.
