Fintech
Entegra Bank Chooses Velocity Solutions to Power Its Small Business Digital Lending
December 18, 2018
Velocity Solutions announced today that its Akouba digital lending platform was selected by Entegra Bank to power the bank’s digital lending for its small and medium-sized business customers. Akouba provides community and regional banks with origination and underwriting services.
“We selected Akouba not only for their cutting-edge technology and willingness to work with us, but for the very positive impact we believe this will have on the bank’s bottom line and on the customer experience,” said Charles Umberger, Executive VP and Chief Lending Officer for the Franklin, NC-based Entegra Bank.
According to the Velocity Solutions statement, Akouba is the only small business digital lending solution endorsed by the American Bankers Association (ABA). Akouba was endorsed by the ABA back in February 2017.
“The ABA’s endorsement will give lending institutions the assurance that Akouba’s solutions meet the highest standards,” said CEO of Akouba Chris Rentner, when they received the endorsement from the ABA. “In a rapidly changing lending environment, and with marketplace lenders disrupting the business lending space, our platform will help banks bring their customers the technology they have been lacking.”
In the same way that OnDeck’s ODX is trying to improve online lending for large banks, like Chase and PNC, Velocity’s Akouba does the same thing for regional banks.
“The small business loan application process is very time-sensitive and costly for banks, and there is a need to simplify and accelerate the process,” said Bryan Luke, chairman of ABA’s Endorsed Solutions Banker Advisory Council.
Velocity Solutions, which operates Akouba, is based in Fort Lauderdale, FL and employs over 100 people, according to Crunchbase. Entegra provides personal and business banking serves at 20 retail branches throughout Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Cross River Bank Raises $100 Million
December 11, 2018Cross River Bank, which provides banking services to fintech companies, announced last week the completion of a funding round of roughly $100 million. This was comprised of a $75 million equity investment from KKR, along with capital from Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Rabbit Capital, and funding from new investors CredEase and Lion Tree. This adds to a $28 million raise a little over two years ago.
Cross River, which originated more than $5 billion in loans as of the end of August 2018, has developed partnerships with fintech leaders to build fully compliant and integrated products within the lending marketplace and payment processing spaces. They have about 15 lending platform partners, including fintech clients Affirm, Best Egg, RocketLoans, Coinbase and TransferWise.
According to the announcement, this new capital will be used to allow Cross River to continue building a complete banking platform where fintech companies can leverage best-in-class banking technology coupled with compliance.
“Cross River offers solutions to fintech companies by giving them access to a full suite of banking solutions and services in a single, fully compliant and innovative platform, making it an increasingly attractive and valuable franchise in a dynamic marketplace,” said Dan Pietrzak, Member and Co-Head of Private Credit at KKR, Cross River’s leading investor.
According to its website, Cross River was named “most innovative bank” by LendIt in 2017 and 2018. Founded in 2008, the Fort Lee, NJ, business-oriented bank has more than 180 employees.
Finitive Appoints Neil Wolfson to Board
December 10, 2018
Finitive announced today that it has appointed Neil Wolfson to its Board of Directors. Wolfson also serves on the Board of Directors at OnDeck.
“Finitive has established an innovative platform to provide institutional investors with direct access to alternative lending investments,” said Wolfson. “Finitive’s platform brings further transparency to this asset class.”
According to an April 2018 deBanked story, Finitive was founded in August 2017 and has two kinds of clients: institutional investors and alternative lending companies. Back in April, the company had only four alternative lender clients. Today, they have eight.
“We are very selective [with our lending clients],” Finitive founder and Executive Chairman told deBanked. “We are not a list service.”
Wolfson spent the last decade as President and Chief Investment Officer of SF Capital Group, a private investment group for high net worth families. There, he invested in over 30 direct debt and equity investments in emerging technology companies with a focus on FinTech companies.
Prior to this, Wolfson spent five years as Chief Investment Officer and President of Wilmington Trust Investment Management, a $40 billion investment management firm, and before that, he was the National Partner in charge of KPMG’s Investment Consulting Practice, representing over $100 billion of assets.
“Neil’s experience investing in global technology companies, coupled with a deep understanding of alternative lending markets, makes him an ideal fit for Finitive’s board,” said Barlow.
Finitive is based in New York and has more than 10 employees.
Signature Bank Partners with trueDigital
December 4, 2018
Today, Signature Bank unveiled a proprietary digital payments platform for its commercial clients, according to a statement released by the bank. The platform, called Signet, is designed to allow Signature Bank’s commercial clients to make real-time payments in U.S. dollars, every hour of the year.
“The ability to transmit funds between approved, fully vetted commercial clients of the bank at all times is very valuable, especially in light of the increasing speed and frequency at which they conduct their business,” said Joseph J. DePaolo, President and Chief Executive Officer at Signature Bank. “Signature Bank has made a commitment to invest in its technology infrastructure, and the Signet Platform is indicative of this investment,”
This commitment by a bank to embrace technology is consistent with other banks of late. Chase and PNC have partnered with OnDeck’s ODX to streamline their online lending processes and other banks have partnered with fintechs recently as well.
“The partnership between trueDigital and Signature Bank will quickly prove to be extremely beneficial and revolutionary for clients globally as they will now be afforded the opportunity to make instantaneous USD payments to one another in real-time at no cost per transaction,” said Sunil Hirani, Founder of trueDigital.
The new Signet platform uses blockchain technology and can be used to make payments across a wide variety of industries, initially focusing on power, shipping, real estate, auto and digital assets where costs, delays, operational risks and counter-party risks are significant, according to a trueDigital statement.
The platform is not designed for a very small company as transactions made on the Signet platform require a minimum account balance of $250,000. Also, the companies exchanging money must both have an account at Signature Bank.
The New York State Department of Financial Services has approved the Signet platform and deposits held on the platform are eligible for FDIC insurance, up to the legal insurable amounts defined by the FDIC.
Signature Bank is a New York-based full-service commercial bank with 30 private client offices throughout the New York metropolitan area. This year, the bank opened a full-service private client banking office in San Francisco. Signature Bank’s specialty finance subsidiary, Signature Financial, LLC, provides equipment finance and leasing. trueDigital is a New York-based fintech company that provides solutions to financial markets by utilizing blockchain-based technologies.
SoFi CEO Reiterates Company’s Low Appetite for Risk
December 3, 2018
In an interview late last week on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” TV show, SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said that when he took over as CEO in March, his number one priority was focusing on “quality of loans over quantity.”
“We have really strong risk controls,” Noto told Cramer. “Knowing that the [changed] interest rate was coming, we wanted to focus on per-loan economics for two reasons: one, we wanted the loans that we created to be great investments for our asset-backed security investors, but also if we keep them on our balance sheet.”
SoFi started out offering college loans and has since developed a wide product offering, including mortgages, personal loans, wealth management and a product designed for parents paying for their children’s education.
During an interview in October at Money 20/20, Noto told the audience that he was accepted to Ivy League colleges, but didn’t take out any loans because he was uncertain if he could afford to pay them back. Instead, because of his academic and sports accomplishments, he was recruited to West Point, the elite U.S. military academy where he attended for free.
SoFi’s typical customer has an average FICO score of 720, Noto said at Money 20/20.
“Higher interest rates have made our underwriting more conservative,” he said.
He also said at Money 20/20 that he believes SoFi ought to eventually open some physical locations, like ATMs, for people who get paid in cash. Additionally, the release of a digital currency product is likely on the horizon in 2019, Noto said.
Earlier last week, Cramer pointed to some non-bank lenders, like Quicken Loans, as posing a risk to the broader economy. But he was supportive of SoFi, telling Noto that he signed up for a SoFi account in 10 seconds.
“It was quick and easy, which is just what [millennials] want,” Cramer said.
Numerated to Improve Online Lending for Regional Banks
November 30, 2018
On Wednesday, Numerated announced that it had closed $8 million in financing, bringing its total to $17 million. Numerated is a platform that helps banks make automated credit and lending decisions.
“We’ve seen a tipping point in the market, with banks across the U.S. focused on digitally serving their business segments and out-competing national and global lenders,” said Numerated founder and CEO Dan O’Malley. “And we look forward to continuing to develop a platform that drives real growth for them.”
Like the recently launched ODX, which grew out of OnDeck’s success helping Chase with online lending, Numerated was first developed in 2015 by Eastern Bank to improve its online lending capabilities. In 2017, it was spun out as an independent company by O’Malley, who had been Chief Digital Officer at Boston-headquartered Eastern Bank.
A new investor who contributed to Numerated’s latest round is Raj Date, the founding Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the current Managing Director at Fenway Summer Ventures. Date will also join Numerated’s Advisory Board.
“The industry has been sorely lacking a solution designed specifically for community and regional banks to compete and win against giant global banks and alternative lenders in business banking,” Date said. “Numerated has quickly grown to become the market leader in business lending with its real-time fintech platform, and I look forward to advising the company as it continues its growth.”
While OnDeck’s ODX and Numerated have similar offerings and objectives – to help banks become faster and more competitive online lenders – Numerated’s focus seems to be on servicing smaller regional banks. Some of its clients, according to its website, include Seacoast Bank, Franklin Synergy Bank, Eastern Bank and MidFirst bank.
Meanwhile, ODX services Chase and it announced in October that its first client as an independent entity was PNC Bank.
“We’re looking at the top 200 banks first,” OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow told deBanked in October.
Numerated was launched in 2017 by O’Malley and is based in Boston.
SoFi Has Another Loss in Q3
November 12, 2018According to the WSJ, SoFi experienced a $12 million EBITDA loss in the 3rd quarter. That follows a $150 million loss in Q2.
“We optimized for investing over profitability this quarter, and expect this to continue given the opportunity in front of us,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto wrote in a letter to shareholders obtained by the WSJ.
At Money2020 last month, Noto suggested that the company would eventually need to open physical locations to manage cash transactions.
As Implementation of FICO’s UltraFICO Approaches, Upstart Says The Value is There
November 5, 2018The rise of fintech has already rocked the banking and traditional lending industry and now it’s disrupting FICO, the traditional credit scoring method that’s been in place since the mid-1900s.
FICO, which is the credit scoring system created by Fair Isaac Corp, is getting a makeover. The UltraFICO Score, which is scheduled to launch in early 2019, will pull from a consumer’s checking, savings and money-market accounts and add the data to their credit profile. It creates a broader credit picture, one that is designed to lead to more lending approvals than the static formula provides, as long as a consumer manages their cash well. Reports suggest the FICO score could jump by 20 points or more for millions of borrowers.
Meanwhile, fintech startup Upstart has been in the consumer lending business for the past five years. Upstart takes a two-pronged approaching, using more variables and more machine-learning algorithms than the traditional credit-scoring method.
“Using a variety of machine learning algorithms lets you pick up new insights from data,” said Upstart Co-Founder Paul Gu.
The company’s approach has influenced banks that frequently approach Upstart, a couple of which have become partners that are using a fully branded version of Upstart.com.
It’s not surprising considering Upstart is experiencing a lower loss rate versus its banking competitors. Upstart’s Gu explained the average lender issuing a personal loan to someone with a FICO score in the 660 range will typically experience a loss rate of 14%. Upstart’s loss rate is half that.
“That same 660-type borrower in our portfolio has an annual loss rate of 7%. That’s a pretty staggering difference and translates into benefits for our borrowers,” Gu told deBanked, adding that if the company can cut the loss rate, they can, in turn, lower the interest rate. Certainly, non-fintech lenders are paying attention.
“I don’t want to claim credit for anything FICO is thinking about. But I do think we are showing the industry at large that there is a huge amount of opportunity out there, and that you can go after it with technology that is available today. The potential benefits for consumers and your business are enormous,” Gu said.
Upstart’s early focus was on younger consumers with no real credit history but with an education history, which Gu said has yielded great success for the company. Since then they’ve expanded to pursue other groups of people who have similarly been “lost in the cracks” of the traditional credit scoring system, including certain occupations.
Gu explained that while lenders typically examine a potential borrower’s income level and their debt-to-income ratio, there’s more to it than that. Upstart most recently has created a way to include data based a potential borrower’s occupation, which he points out is tricky to quantify.
“Occupations are combinations of words that are hard to group in a useful way for the purposes of data analysis,” said Gu. Nonetheless, Upstart and its team of nearly a dozen data scientists have poured research into employers and occupations to create a classification system and determine how to turn words into numbers to use in their machine learning model.
“It’s not shocking that some professions are more highly correlated with repayment than others. Nurses, for example, are very reliable in paying back their loans,” Gu explained.
Upstart, which has issued consumer loans to fewer than 300,000 borrowers, has made it their mission to constantly improve upon their models to find cracks. “Our best estimate suggests we’ve solved only 8% of the total opportunity so far,” he said.
Low-Hanging Fruit
It’s early days for FICO’s new credit scoring system, but according to reports lenders have already begun to show an interest. Experian has reportedly partnered with fintech startup Finicity to publish the broader credit profile to banks. But the increased competition doesn’t seem to bother Upstart.
“I think there are starting to be efforts made by other players in the space to do some of the things we’re doing. Some of the lower hanging fruit we were uncompeted for earlier might have a little bit of competition. That said, the thing people don’t realize is how much room for improvement is still left,” Gu said.
As for FICO, their new feature is a side-product to the traditional credit-scoring system, not a replacement, which could impact the pace of adoption and innovation. “This kind of technology investment should take 95% of their attention, not 5%,” said Gu.
