Fintech
CAFE’s Fall 2024 Accelerator Cohort a Success
November 25, 2024deBanked attended and sponsored the final demo day of CAFE’s Fall 2024 Accelerator Cohort. CAFE, as previously profiled, is the non-profit Center for Advancing Financial Equity. The six members of the Cohort were Carvertise, GivingCredit, Kredit Academy, Odynn, Salus, and Prismm.
As previously stated, the bi-annual accelerator aims to identify, support and grow extraordinary financial accelerated technologies and innovations. Hundreds of companies apply but only six get selected for each cohort.
The demo day took place inside the Fintech Innovation Hub, situated on University of Delaware’s STAR campus. It was a major success.
To learn more about CAFE, visit: https://ftcafe.org/
Meet the CAFE That Can Accelerate Your Fintech Startup
October 14, 2024Newer fintechs on a mission to advance financial health and wellness for low-to-moderate income individuals and underserved populations may not have to weather the startup journey alone. Inside the Fintech Innovation Hub, situated on University of Delaware’s STAR campus, is the non-profit Center for Advancing Financial Equity (CAFE). Supported by numerous partnerships including the Small Business Administration, Discover, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), the American Bankers Association, and more, one of its signature initiatives is its bi-annual fintech accelerator, which aims to identify, support and grow extraordinary financial accelerated technologies and innovations. Hundreds of companies apply but only six get selected for each cohort of the accelerator. One of those selected this past Spring, Parlay, offers a powerful tool to improve small business loan applications. Another, Stratyfy, offers interpretable AI solutions that enable financial institutions to make more accurate, efficient, and fair financial decisions in credit risk, fraud, and compliance.
Being accepted into CAFE requires a startup to already be up and operating.
“[These companies are] in market, the products are built already,” said Kristen Castell, Managing Director of CAFE. “They do have some customers, some of them are enterprise customers like banks, a full time team, and many of them have raised money already.”
Castell tells deBanked that the companies applying to the accelerator still need a lot of help in terms of making industry connections, scaling distribution, and developing the right partnerships. It’s an eight-week program, some of which takes place on location at the Fintech Innovation Hub in Delaware. The rest is virtual. Applicants and those selected can be from anywhere in the US. The founders, all connected by some level of common interest, are bound to form a bond throughout the unique experience. Last week for example, the members of the Fall cohort went on a field trip to the Wilmington, Delaware headquarters of Best Egg (F/K/A Marlette), an online lender, and got to learn about their path from being a startup in 2014 to the fintech stalwart they are today.
“This time, we have some opportunities to meet the American Bankers Association in Washington, DC,” Castell said. “We also meet the regulators at CFPB in Washington, DC. There’s some other conference opportunities like another accelerator called RevTech Labs that has an investor conference in Charlotte. So there’s an opportunity to pitch there to investors.”
The learning curve for any company coming through the accelerator is dramatically shortened by the access and guidance they get, whether that be from other fintechs, from bankers, from regulators, or the largest fintech trade association, the American Fintech Council.
At the end of it all there’s a demo day in person at the Fintech Innovation Hub in Delaware, where they present to investors, bankers, academics, industry and community leaders, non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs alike to show what they’re made of.
Castell, a former banker herself that previously worked for JPMorgan and BlackRock, also experienced a taste of being a fintech entrepreneur when she became interested in impact investing. It’s a scene she loves. When the plan for CAFE was in development, the opportunity to be involved with financial inclusion, technology, and startups all in one was something she really wanted to take on.
“It’s really been an incredible opportunity to build the organization, to build the program, to work with all these partners, to bring all these stakeholders that I had mentioned earlier in and we’re not done,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”
The six members of the Fall cohort are Carvertise, GivingCredit, Kredit Academy, Odynn, Salus, and Prismm. Sponsors include the American Bankers Association (ABA), Siegfried Advisory, Delaware Prosperity Partnership (DPP), Wolf & Co, Delaware Tech Park, deBanked, and Discover Financial Services.
deBanked is expected to attend the demo day in November.
Steve McLaughlin to Speak at B2B Finance Expo
August 29, 2024Steve McLaughlin will appear on stage at B2B Finance Expo for a fireside chat. McLaughlin is the Founder and CEO of FT Partners and former senior banker at Goldman Sachs covering FinTech and Financial Services for over 20 years. Steve was recently Ranked #1 on Institutional Investor’s “Most Influential Dealmakers in FinTech” report and named “Investment Banker of the Year” and ranked #1 FinTech Banker in Silicon Valley by The Information. FT Partners was founded in late 2001 and has won “Investment Banking Firm of the Year” four times since 2004. Steve has personally led and closed hundreds of FinTech M&A, Capital Raise and IPO Advisory transactions. @ftpartners www.ftpartners.com
Greg Smith, a Managing Director for FT Partners, will also be giving a keynote at B2B Finance Expo.
B2B Finance Expo takes place at Wynn, Las Vegas September 23-24. Registration is still available here. The room block has already SOLD OUT.
MoneyThumb Acquired, Ryan Campbell Takes Over as CEO, and What to Expect
August 29, 2024Ryan Campbell will take over as CEO of MoneyThumb as part of the deal announced earlier today. MoneyThumb is being acquired by an investment group led by Iron Creek Partners LLC that includes Main Street Capital Corporation (NYSE: MAIN). Campbell was for a long time MoneyThumb’s EVP of Sales & Marketing. Ralph Mayer, MoneyThumb’s founder, will move on to an advisory role and retain his board seat.
MoneyThumb is widely known in the small business finance industry for two signature products it offers, PDF Insights, which reads and analyzes financial documents, and Thumbprint, which assesses whether documents have been manipulated and could be fraudulent.
The idea for the company, which originated over a decade ago, came to Ralph Mayer when someone had asked him a basic question, could he convert the data in a PDF file?
“I had been in software my entire career. I was an angel investor and I was looking to get into something a little bit different,” Mayer said of the time when the idea for MoneyThumb came to him. “Originally we got started selling software to accountants.”
MoneyThumb soon encountered a field that seemed to handle an unlimited number of PDFs and was ripe for the product they were building. It was the MCA & revenue based financing industry. MoneyThumb has made a name for itself in it ever since.
Ryan Campbell told deBanked that it’s actually quite common for funding companies to be on the receiving end of manipulated bank statements and that about 6% of the documents they analyze on average end up meeting or surpassing the scoring threshold they’ve built to indicate manipulation.
“It happens a whole lot more than what you would think,” Campbell said.
One major trend they’ve noticed is that before covid 90% of fraudulently submitted bank statements did not even have financial columns that reconciled numerically whereas now most fraudulent ones today do. Today’s fraud, because of how good scammers have gotten, may not even be noticeable to the naked eye which is why their technology has become even more important.
Campbell said that as part of the acquisition it will be business as usual with their clients. The company is keeping its name and Iron Creek is going to continue letting them do what they do best. MoneyThumb is used by both funders and ISOs and Campbell is regularly seen on the industry trade show circuit.
“This acquisition underscores MoneyThumb’s proven technology and strong industry demand, and supports our long-term growth objectives,” Campbell said in an official statement. “This partnership marks an exciting milestone for our company and with the support of Iron Creek, we are well-poised to accelerate our growth, continue to deliver exceptional software solutions for our customers and help lenders manage risk and deliver more capital faster to small businesses.”
Tech Founder Takes Online Business Loan, Grows Massively
February 2, 2024The founder of Testimonial.to took to X to share his story about using a revenue based business loan from Stripe Capital. It worked very well for him. His posts about it are below:
Everyone in the comments missing the point picking on the interest amount. Dude deployed cash to grow his business by $300k ARR.
— Preetam Nath (@hipreetam93) July 27, 2023
Not really to build a business from scratch, but to scale a business that already proved the PMF
— Damon Chen (@damengchen) July 26, 2023
Some marketing expenses and hiring
— Damon Chen (@damengchen) July 26, 2023
I can take $187,300 from Stripe without giving away a single share of my company. The modern-day "VC"! pic.twitter.com/1wiTQsa7KF
— Damon Chen (@damengchen) February 2, 2024
Stripe Capital works similar to how other platforms work in that their product is a loan with MCA-esque features. For example, merchants apply a fixed percentage of their credit card sales toward their loan balance up until the loan is paid in full.
Financial Service Associations Urge Legislation on IRS Income Verification
January 25, 2024The IRS doesn’t want financial service companies to be able to verify the income of customers, at least not through official channels like the Income Verification Express Services (IVES) system. On January 2 and 3, the IRS announced it would only allow IVES transcripts to be made available “to mortgage lending firms for the sole purpose of obtaining a mortgage on residential or commercial real property (land and buildings).” Government agencies will also not be allowed to use IVES.
“The IRS is implementing the provisions of the Taxpayer First Act (P. Law 116-25) with increased privacy and security requirements for access to confidential tax information,” it announced. “If tax transcript information is required by your firm for other than securing a mortgage, we recommend requesting it directly from the taxpayer.”
But relying on getting the information directly from the taxpayer defeats the whole purpose in more ways than one, many financial service trade associations say. On Wednesday, a letter jointly signed by the American Bankers Association, America’s Credit Unions, American Fintech Council, Consumer Data Industry Association, Electronic Transactions Association, Financial Technology Association, Innovative Lending Platform Association, Independent Community Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, Responsible Business Lending Coalition, and Small Business Finance Association urged senior ranking members of Congress to pass H.R. 3335. Dubbed the IRS eIVES Modernization and Anti-Fraud Act, it would “ensure the IRS follows the original intent of Congress to modernize the system and prevent disruptions to the consumer and commercial lending industries.”
Prosper Loan Originations down 50% YoY in Q3
January 17, 2024Online consumer lending stalwart Prosper Marketplace originated $493.8M in loan originations in its last reported quarter. While it sounds like a lot, the company said that’s a decrease of 53% from the same period in 2022. Prosper originated $1.72B in loans for the first 9 months of 2023 vs $2.5B in loans for the first 9 months of 2022.
“…the mix of personal loan originations on the Prosper platform reflects a significant decrease in investor appetite for whole loan purchases under the current economic environment, specifically for personal loans not assigned Prosper ratings,” the company said in its financial reports. “These personal loans are sold only to institutional investors and based on specific underwriting criteria and custom risk models developed by these investors.”
Prosper Marketplace logged a cumulative net loss of $93M for the first three quarters of 2023.
Conversion Rates on Upstart’s Consumer Loans
November 7, 2023Upstart is having a tough time in the current interest rate environment.
“In the third quarter, rates were at an all-time high in our marketplace, higher than we expected them to be, reflecting both decades high interest rates and significantly elevated risk in the consumer economy,” said Upstart CEO David Girouard during the company’s Q3 earnings call. “This is not a path we would have chosen and is obviously not constructive to our growth, but it reflects the reality of operating responsibly in this environment.”
The company won’t offer loans above 36% APR which means if the risk models indicate a rate higher than that would be necessary to move forward, they just decline the loan altogether. Notably, this and other economic factors has had a negative impact on their conversion rates.
“I think our [conversion rate] for this quarter was around 8.5%,” said Upstart CFO Sanjay Datta. “So meaning, of all applicants to fill in an application and submit, about 8.5% of them become funded loans. I think at our peak, that number was closer to 24%.”
And of all loans that get approved, only 1/3rd of them fund.
It’s been a rough couple of years for Upstart. The stock is down 92% from its all time high in October 2021. At the time the company was planning to expand into the small business loan market, which it finally did in June 2022. In the subsequent quarter it originated $9M in small business loans. But earlier this year the company suspended it entirely. At the time Girouard said, “This was a necessary step to ensure we can adequately resource the rest of the roadmap. We look forward to the day when we can resume our pursuit of the world’s best AI-powered business loan.”
It has not resumed business lending though it continues to cite in its quarterly earnings presentations that the addressable small business loan market numbers $895B.