Fintech
Peer IQ Insights for Q1 2018
March 30, 2018Peer IQ released its 2018 first quarter “Lending Earnings Insights,” which analyzes lender performance with a focus on credit performance trends. They analyze data across three main lender segments: Fintechs and Non-banks, Large banks, and Card issuers. Below are some highlights from Peer IQ’s analysis on this year’s first quarter:
Credit re-normalization continues
“Credit re-normalization continues across all major lending groups. Credit performance this quarter is mixed. We observe improvements, and record low delinquencies from ONDK, OMF, and FinTechs in particular. LendingClub expects 31 bps lower charge-offs going forward due to tighter credit standards. At Discover – a bellwether for personal loan performance – the net charge off rate jumped 92 bps YOY to 3.62% – the largest increase in several years.
Card issuers
“Card issuers are increasing loan loss reserves at a higher rate than loan growth, indicating expectations of higher losses going forward. American Express increased loan loss provisions 33% although loan growth was only 14%.”
Banks and FinTech
“Bank FinTech partnerships, and M&A continues. Banks are either partnering with FinTechs or investing in beefing up their technology capabilities in payments, lending, digital banking and wealth management. Banks like JP are partnering with Amazon by rolling out co-branded checking accounts and credit cards. A specter is haunting financial services – the specter of Amazon.”
Lenders Pass the Buck on to Borrowers
“Lenders are taking actions to pass rising rates on to borrowers to protect margins and investor returns. Lenders are also trying to reduce all-in funding costs by reducing the credit spreads on their securitizations.”
A Dialogue with Peter Renton: Cryptocurrency and Beyond
March 2, 2018
deBanked Magazine recently caught up with Peter Renton, founder of Lend Academy, a leading educational resource for the marketplace industry. Through his writing, podcasts and video courses, he’s been helping multitudes of people better understand the industry since 2010. Renton is also the co-founder of LendIt, one of the world’s largest fintech conventions, which recently branched out beyond its marketplace lending focus to include other types of fintech. The flagship U.S. conference will take place April 9 through April 11 in San Francisco. The following is an edited transcript of our discussions.
deBanked: Why did you decide to rebrand LendIt as LendItFintech?
Renton: The main reason is that we have moved beyond the online lending space. While it’s still the core of what we do, it’s not all of what we do anymore. Many of the large online lenders have also moved beyond online lending. Lending is part of financial services, but our attendees want to know what else is important. Our attendees also want to look at other opportunities for expansion. They want to know how other areas of fintech are going to affect their business—topics such as blockchain and digital banking. LendItFintech tells people that lending is what we focus on, but it also makes clear that we’re about more than lending.
deBanked: In addition to your marketplace lending investments, you entered into the cryptocurrency space back in early 2015. Tell us what you’re doing now with respect to cryptocurrency?
Renton: This was not something that I spent much time thinking about back then. At the time, I expected bitcoin to never amount to anything. But I’m interested in financial innovation and I decided to give it a go. I never thought in my wildest dreams that it would get to $10,000. (Editor’s note: In 2017, bitcoin climbed to nearly $20,000; in early February it fell below $8,000 for the first time since Nov. 2017)
I opened up a Coinbase account with $2,000, which got me 10 bitcoins. I have since sold a portion of it gradually as the price of bitcoin went up, and I diversified into a handful of other coins as well. I have recently moved a significant portion of my investment into a privately managed cryptocurrency fund, and I still maintain my Coinbase account too.
deBanked: How are things different now than when you first entered the digital currency market?
Renton: In January 2015, I created my bitcoin account and I don’t think I ever logged in over the next 18 months, or if I did, it was maybe just once or twice. No one was talking about bitcoin back then. It was still on the fringe of fintech. Sure, there were some people focused on it, but it wasn’t part of mainstream media coverage. Then, all of a sudden, it became hot because people love get-rich-quick schemes and hearing about people who hit the big time from nothing. These stories really fuel people’s imagination. Then suddenly bitcoin became one of the biggest phenomena of 2017; no one would have predicted a few years ago that would happen.
deBanked: What are the biggest risks you see with cryptocurrency today and how can investors best overcome these challenges?
Renton: Many people are buying purely on speculation with no thought that bitcoin could go down in price. You hear of people buying bitcoin on their credit card and paying 20 percent interest on that purchase. It’s insane. I feel that cryptocurrencies are here to stay, but I don’t like that they have these massive 20 percent to 30 percent swings in a day. The speculators have helped drive the price up, but they’ve also driven the volatility up and that’s been a bad thing.
deBanked: Do you think cryptocurrency will ever dethrone cash? If so, what will it take to get to that point?
Renton: I feel that some kind of digital currency is inevitable—but whether it’s a Federal Reserve-backed currency or something else remains to be seen. I have an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old and I am confident that at some point in their lifetime there will be no such thing as cash. In China, for example, there are some places where you can’t even use cash. You can go to a street vendor and buy a piece of fruit with your phone. Certainly in the U.S. we’re not there yet, but I think China shows where we are going to be.
Cryptocurrency is only one type of digital cash, and it’s hard to say how it will ultimately fit into the larger picture. To dethrone cash as we know it today, cryptocurrency needs to be a quick and efficient way of transacting, and right now it’s not quick and it’s not cheap.
That said, I believe there will be some kind of digital currency in the future. It will take a long time for the Federal Reserve to say cash is no longer legal tender, but I expect we’ll see some kind of digital currency in the next 10 years for sure.
deBanked: How do you think regulation will change the cryptocurrency landscape? Is it inevitable and, more importantly, do you think regulation of cryptocurrency is necessary to take it beyond the level it is today?
Renton: Right now bitcoin is not systemically important. At a market cap of around $156 billion in early February, if something happens and it completely crashes, it won’t make a dent on the U.S. or world economy. But if bitcoin continues to rise and reaches a market cap of say $16 trillion, and then it falls to zero, that would reverberate around the world. The largest economies that have the most bitcoin would be the most impacted.
At some point governments will step in with regulation. It’s already happening in places like China and South Korea and there are rumors of other governments taking action. I don’t think the largest governments will allow their economy to be at the whim of speculators.
deBanked:deBanked: How do you feel about the SEC stepping into regulate ICOs? Is this necessary to protect investors?
Renton: There are certainly some ICOs that are complete scams while others are obviously violating securities laws. But many ICOs have strong legal teams supporting them and are doing it right now. The SEC should absolutely clamp down on those doing the wrong thing, but my hope is that they don’t overreact and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
deBanked: What about online lending? The industry has gone through a lot of changes in its relatively short history. How do you expect to see the competitive landscape change in the next year or so? What about farther out?
Renton: The online lending space has gone through a lot of changes in its short history. I feel like the biggest trend we’re seeing right now is banks launching their own platforms. Take Goldman Sachs with the Marcus online lending platform, for example. More than anything else that has happened in the history of online lending that is among the most telling for the future, I think. Goldman has gone all in with this effort, and that move woke up all the large banks. Top banks like PNC and Barclays are also launching their own initiatives instead of partnering with others, which was surprising to me. I would have thought there would be more partnerships. There are still some, but several banks have decided to do it themselves rather than partnering. Smaller banks, however, that want to get into the space, will likely partner because they can’t afford to do it themselves. While we have seen a few partnerships develop, I expect we will see many more over the next couple of years.
deBanked: What do you see as the biggest risks for online lenders today? How can they best overcome these challenges?
Renton: As an industry, we have to focus on profitability. Profitability comes down primarily to two things. First, you have to get your cost of acquisition down. Some of the companies that failed recently were never able to get their costs of acquisition down to a manageable level. Underwriting is the second piece. Particularly if you’re a balance sheet lender and you’re not underwriting well, you can’t make money. The pullback in the industry in 2016 occurred because many of the major platforms got a little too aggressive in their underwriting. Investors are still paying for some of those mistakes.
Successful companies are ones that have figured out how to profitably acquire customers and how to underwrite effectively. Most of them have learned their lesson, but in business companies sometimes have short memories. We need to keep a close eye on it.
deBanked: What advice do you have for alternative lenders and funders?
Renton: In addition to paying careful attention to profitability and underwriting, another important piece is having diversified funding sources. You want to make sure that you don’t have one big bank or some other source providing 90 percent of your funding. You should really have different kinds of lending sources. Some loans you can fund through a marketplace, some loans you can fund through your balance sheet. It’s good when you’re not reliant on one particular way of funding your loans.
deBanked: How is regulation likely to impact the online lending industry?
Renton: Having support in Congress for the online lending space is important. Congress hasn’t devoted a lot of attention to it in the past few years, but it’s starting to. The Madden decision—which has the potential to lead to significant nationwide changes in consumer and commercial lending by non-bank entities—has created uncertainty in the industry. In states affected by the decision (Connecticut, New York and Vermont) already there has been less access to credit. I’m hopeful that Congress moves ahead with legislation to override the Madden decision that’s having such an impact in the Second Circuit states. People are worried that it could expand nationwide and Congress needs to act so there’s clarification. There’s too much uncertainty right now.
deBanked: Several platforms have closed their doors in the past year or so. Do you expect to see this trend continue?
Renton: There are companies out there still trying to raise money and struggling to do so. That’s a healthy thing for an industry. You want the strong players to survive and thrive and for the weaker ones to go away.
deBanked: How big do you think an online lender has to be to thrive?
Renton: There’s no doubt that scale is important. If you’re a small player, you have to have some kind of niche in order to acquire customers. If you have that, you have the ability to compete. Even with that sometimes, it’s going to be difficult. It’s a pretty complex business. You need to have a lot of staff for compliance and operations and that can be expensive. When you have high fixed costs, you have to have scale to be able to make a profit. That said, I think there’s room for more than just the ultra-large players in the online lending space. I think there will be plenty of opportunity for strong, well-positioned medium-sized players to compete.
deBanked: What about M&A in the industry?
Renton: Valuations at many of the large platforms are way down from where they were several years ago. As long as valuations stay depressed, I think we could see a big acquisition of a major platform this year. Some of these platforms have millions of customers. Having the ability to pick up such a large number of customers instantly through an acquisition could be compelling for the right buyer, such as a large bank.
deBanked: Is this a good time or a bad time to be an online lender in your opinion?
Renton: It is still a good time to be an online lender. We are expanding access to credit and making the world a better place. I have never been more excited about the industry than I am today.
Ron Suber: ‘This Industry Will Look Very Different One Year From Now’
February 25, 2018
Ron Suber wears many hats. His official LinkedIn profile lists him as President Emeritus and Senior Advisor at Prosper Marketplace. Now you can add a new title to his repertoire – the Magic Johnson on fintech. That’s because when it comes to Suber’s legacy, he’s all about the passing game.
“I really enjoy the assist in basketball more than the score or the dunk and so I’m trying to be that leader of assists in our industry, Magic Johnson, if you’ll let me use that analogy … I want to be him for our industry and help everybody win and help the whole thing be bigger, but you have to give the ball to the people in the position where they can score and that’s what I’m trying to do,” said Suber in a podcast discussion with Lend Academy’s Peter Renton, who is also a co-founder of LendIt.
Since Suber stepped down as president of Prosper, his presence in marketplace lending and fintech only seems to have blossomed, which in hindsight may have been the plan all along. The godfather of fintech, as he’s also known, is in the midst of what he’s dubbed a professional rewiring, one that didn’t prevent him from participating in a podcast with Renton.
During the discussion, Suber didn’t shy away from any topic, fielding questions on everything from his investment portfolio, to Prosper, to travel and his views on marketplace lending and fintech. His travels have taken Suber to Patagonia and the straits of Magellan to his favorite Aussie city of Melbourne. Next up Suber plans to explore Africa, including Rwanda and Tanzania.
Suber on Aussie IPO Credible
San Francisco-based Credible, a consumer finance marketplace for millennials, just raised $50 million in an Australian IPO. Suber, who serves as chairman of the fintech, got to know Credible CEO Stephen Dash a few years ago. When Dash needed to raise money, Suber was the first to work with other fintech influencers including a group in Asia to invest $10 million in the company at a $40 million valuation.
Credible followed up with another equity round before deciding to IPO in Australia, where the market is different versus the United States or Hong Kong.
“We were able to meet with the asset managers, the family offices, and the superannuation funds and some of the pension funds in Asia, Hong Kong in particular, and throughout Australia who were very supportive of Stephen Dash, who is from Australia,” said Suber, adding that Credible was the biggest tech/fintech IPO in Australia last year.
Incidentally, Suber has also met with Australia Treasurer Scott Morrison, who sparked a meeting with Suber, Dash, US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and other members of the payments market to discuss how Australia can engage with young US entrepreneurs.
We asked Suber what to expect with crypto and lending, in response to which he told deBanked: “Like the very early days of the internet, there were lots of dot-com companies with high valuations in the hype cycle, little revenue and unclear long-game solutions…think Amazon. Big winners emerged, and the majority lost money on the early bets. The same is true for cryptocurrencies. Enormous winners will emerge. In my opinion, the winners include CoinBase, Ripple and Ethereum.”
Suber on Prosper
While Suber has moved on from an executive role at Prosper, he remains engaged with the company and is close with the leadership team, including CEO David Kimball and CFO Usama Ashraf. Suber’s involved across the board, from customer acquisition, to business development and on the capital markets side of things as well.
“It’s again doing close to $300 million a month in originations, it has $100 million in cash it generates cash each quarter, it has its own securitization channel at this time in addition to the consortium … There’s a lot going on there including some product expansion, so there’s no shortage of things to do with Prosper, which I care a lot about,” said Suber.
Suber on Hindsight Being 20/20
Marketplace lending has had peaks and valleys along the way as it has matured from a nascent segment to essentially a transformational influence on the lending space, with its technology touching everything from the business model, to the borrower to the banks.
But if hindsight were 20/20, there are some things he’d do differently the second time around.
He pointed to Prosper’s acquisition of American HealthCare Lending, which he characterized as a “great decision,” giving the marketplace lender an opportunity to tap the healthcare borrower market. But as in any relationship, you can’t change each other.
“We changed American Healthcare Lending too much and tried to make it into something that it just couldn’t be with the point of sale financing. I think the lesson there is it’s great to do an acquisition, but you have to make sure you execute and keep it fresh and focused and successful once you get it,” said Suber, pointing to the acquisition of Tel Aviv’s BillGuard as yet another example of this.
Prosper also took on too much office space around the country.
“Perhaps we could have outsourced a little more instead of all the hiring. Clearly diversifying committed capital and maybe back then even using some of the capital we raised to do these own CLUB deal securitizations, which Prosper does now very successfully with its balance sheet,” he noted.
Suber also urged the marketplace lending market to showcase its technology and unique abilities as “tech-enabled finance companies” more. As the innovator that he is, Suber suggested there should be greater collaboration among marketplace lenders, comparing it to the airline industry. He explained:
“So, the airline industry is competitive, they’re competing for dollars and seats and people and talented pilots and the best planes, but the reality is they have to work together, they have to make sure that planes don’t crash and that the industry is on time and does lots of good things together… And that’s really what I think we can do better, a better job of as an industry is really working together, competing, but communicating and making sure everybody lands safely.”
Suber on Marketplace Lending
As the godfather of fintech, Suber is often looked to as a guiding voice on the status of the market. That’s why when he says the industry has advanced in innings, it’s revelatory.
“I think we’re in the home stretch, I think we’ve done the seventh inning stretch,” he said. Suber pointed to Asia, where the market has gone from 3,000 platforms to 50 and in the United States where it’s consolidated from 300 to fewer than 100.
“The mature are maturing,” he said,” pointing to a race in which some platforms are pulling away from others in terms of valuation, volume and the ability to engage the industry.
“The separation will continue,” he said. “The industry will look very different one year from now.”
Suber on His Investment Portfolio
If you’ve ever wondered which investment areas Suber believes represent the next opportunity, look no further. He’s “struck” by financial inclusion, in particularly a telecom play Juvo for which he’s an advisor and in which invested a few rounds. Juvo is looking to serve the unbanked in the developing world where they lack financial identities, internet access and smartphones. The company has partnered with the likes of Samsung.
“We talk a lot in the online lending industry about top down, super-prime and prime and near prime; this is my way of coming from the bottom up with technology and data and finance to be involved in financial inclusion. I’m really quite excited about that one,” said Suber.
He also likes startup Unison and the emerging fractionalization of the home equity market, which he characterizes as “the next big thing.” In addition to Suber, this market has attracted the likes of Marc Andreessen.
Suber has nearly 20 investments in private companies, including payment companies, financial inclusion and lending. He’s also become a debt investor to some online lenders, invoice finance plays among others. “I’ve really enjoyed the debt side of investing as much as the equity side,” he proclaimed.
Suber on Broader Fintech
In addition to marketplace lending, Suber is also a believer in the point-of-sale (PoS) solution and invoice finance companies, which he says are “fixing the way invoicing is financed and making it better, cheaper and quicker.” And in taking an overarching view of the market, he also likes the cleantech, pointing to solar fintech play Mosaic and a company called CleanCapital.
Suber on Rewiring
Suber is a big believer in rewirement, both in his personal life and in business. He defines it as “redesigning one’s life personally and professionally.” Before he applied it to his career, Suber and his wife Caryn pursued a rewirement in their personal lives, one that included selling their home and material possessions, buying a new home and traveling.
In 2017, he decided to do the same thing professionally to strike a better balance in his life. Since then, he’s developed a color-coded regiment by which to live, separating the hours of the week across categories including exercise = blue, personal = green, work = purple and teaching and managing his family office = red.
“There’s a lot of green on my calendar,” he said.
For those interested in rewirement, Suber has launched a blog on the topic, with the maiden couple of entries documenting the first 360 days and counting.
Many of Suber’s quotes here originated from his interview with Peter Renton. Renton is the co-founder of the LendIt Conference.
Fed Study Debunks “Lax Screening” Hypothesis Of Fintech Lenders
February 23, 2018
The New York Federal Reserve published the results of their study on the role of technology in mortgage lending. And they bear good news for fintech, that technological innovation has improved the efficiency of financial intermediation.
Fintech lenders, it turns out, are faster, experience lower default rates, and are more responsive to changes in demand. Faster processing times did not translate into issuing riskier loans, the report concludes.
Fintech lenders were defined as lenders that offer an application process that can be completed entirely online.
The Fed researchers also found little evidence that fintech lenders disproportionately target marginal borrowers with low access to finance. On the Contrary, the data actually shows that fintech borrowing is actually higher among those both older and more educated.
“We find that default rates on fintech mortgages are about 25% lower than those for traditional lenders, even when controlling for detailed loan characteristics,” the report says. “There is no significant difference in interest rates. These results speak against a lax screening hypothesis, and instead indicate that fintech lending technologies may help attract and screen for less risky borrowers.”
The two largest fintech mortgage originators in 2016 were Quicken Loans and loanDepot.
New RealtyMogul CIO Praises the Company’s Avoidance of Land, Hotel and Development Investments
January 23, 2018Los Angeles’ RealtyMogul promoted Chris Fraley from interim chief investment officer to permanent CIO, earlier this month. After the announcement, Fraley told commercial real estate publication, Bisnow, that the company’s “fairly conservative approach” has put it in an optimal position at this point in the current real estate cycle.
“There is certainly a feeling that we are at the top of the cycle given this is one of the longest economic expansions in the past century, from a time perspective,” he told Bisnow. “It is a relief that RealtyMogul has taken a fairly conservative approach by focusing mainly on income investments and light value-add and avoiding traditionally riskier assets like land, hotels and development.”
In 2017, RealtyMogul eclipsed several internal records and finalized transactions holding $566 million worth of capitalization.
Fraley believes that the company can “significantly increase” that number this year.
The Yale grad joined the company in June, bringing over 20 years of experience to the role. Former posts include a tenure as partner at Rockwood Capital, which preceeded the launch of his own real estate investment company, Evolve.
“Being on the operator side of the business really helped me appreciate all the hard work that goes into managing a real estate project,” Fraley said while discussing Evolve with Bisnow. “It has certainly given me greater insight on how to evaluate a potential operating partner as an investor.”
Fraley also shared that when he initially joined the company in an interim capacity in June, he did not intend to stay on full-time.
He gave partial credit for his decision to become a permanent member of the team to the company’s ability to merge research and data with technology.
Drift Capital Partners Credit Facility Shows Confidence in Fintech
January 20, 2018Drift Capital Partners, LLC, an alternative asset management company, announced a new $50 million credit facility earlier this month. The funds will be used to “expand its portfolio of structured credit solutions to FinTech enabled Non-Bank Financial Services companies and allow them the opportunity to increase lending to ‘main street’ businesses,” a company release said.
Drift previously provided $25 million in financing to McClean-based Breakout Capital.
“Since its inception, Drift has been focused on developing solutions to bridge the chasm between institutional investors and main street businesses and we believe this facility is an important step toward solidifying that connection,” said McLean Wilson, Managing Partner of Drift in a company release.
Will 2018 Be a Special Year?
December 29, 2017
2018 is going to be different, in a good way. That’s word on the street in the alternative finance industry, many of whom have told me that it’s just something they feel.
I feel it too. The S&P 500 is at an all-time high, Bitcoin is up more than 1,400% for the year, lenders are lending in full force, and on top of it all, Donald Trump is president. The world is changing and from a one thousand foot view, it’s an exciting time for finance.
2018 will welcome Broker Fair, the inaugural conference for MCA and business loan brokers.
2018 will transform alternative finance into just finance. For example, a mailer I received from PayPal advertising a small business loan up to $500,000 in as quick as 1 business day, included a letter signed by a top manager of Swift Capital. PayPal acquired Swift in 2017. Yesterday’s alternative loan is simply today’s loan. The one-day small business loan is becoming normalized and being offered by widely recognized financial companies.
Ripple surpassed Ethereum this morning to become the 2nd largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Cryptocurrency, once the domain of Bitcoin-obsessed internet anarchists, is quickly being adopted by the world’s largest banks.
It’s one thing to just talk about innovations in finance and another to realize that you now rely on those innovations. My company got a loan from Square, I got insurance through CoverWallet, I have funds in Lending Club, Prosper, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. Coinbase is the new etrade. MCA and online business loans are the new community banks. Payments can be made instantly and cost effectively.
2018 will be special because the world that we predicted would come, has come. That means it will be time to think about what will come even next. Online lending has come, instant payments has come, cryptocurrency is fast approaching. What will be the cool edgy hip thing in the ’20s that we may once again refer to as alternative? Mull that one over for a bit and consider that in the next decade the sexy fintech companies of the 20-teens will be stodgy financial institutions in the 2020s. This decade’s innovation will become part of the boring normal manner in which finance is transacted. That’s a fact.
Enjoy 2018. I know I will.
Happy new year,
– Sean
Technology Drives Changes in CRE Lending Space
December 21, 2017
Online technology, which paved new paths for consumer and small business lending, is making similar inroads with the commercial real estate industry.
Over the last few years, several online marketplaces have been established to try and match commercial real estate borrowers with lenders quickly and efficiently using technology. In the past, commercial real estate lending depended heavily on having local connections, but online platforms are blurring these lines—making geographical borders less relevant and opening doors for new types of lenders to establish themselves.
While banks remain the largest source of commercial real estate mortgage financing, non–bank players—including credit unions, private capital lenders, accredited and non–accredited investors, hedge funds, insurance companies and lending arms of brokerage firms—have become more formidable opponents in recent years. Online platforms offer even more opportunity for these alternative players to gain a competitive edge.
At present, most of these commercial real estate marketplaces are purely intermediaries—they’re matching borrowers and investors, not actually doing the lending. Certainly, it’s an easier business model to develop than a direct lending one, but things could change over time, as borrowers become more comfortable with the online model and develop confidence that these platforms can perform, industry participants say.
“You have to be viewed as credible with a certainty of funding for borrowers to come to you. You can’t just put up a flag and say ‘Hey we’re making loans’ because borrowers won’t trust you and they won’t have the confidence that the loan is going to close,” says Evan Gentry, founder and chief executive of Money360, one of the few online direct lenders in this space. “However, once you develop a reputation of strong performance, the tide turns very quickly and that confidence is established,” he says.
For now, however, many of the marketplaces say they are content to remain intermediaries and offer business opportunities to lenders instead of competing with them. The sheer size of the market— commercial/multifamily debt outstanding rose to $3.01 trillion at the end of the first quarter, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association—and the fact that is an enormously diverse industry with no plain vanilla product makes it more likely that several platforms can co–exist without completely cannibalizing each other’s business, observers say.
Each of the online marketplaces has a different business and pricing model. Some marketplaces focus on small loans, while some have larger minimums; some focus on just debt; some focus on a mixture of equity and debt. Some sites cater to institutional lenders and accredited investors to help fund loans. Other sites invite non–accredited investors who meet certain criteria to participate in loans, opening doors to a segment of the population which previously had minimal access to commercial real estate deals. While the sites differ in their approach, the upshot is clear: banks—while still formidable competitors in commercial real estate lending—are no longer the only game in town for funding these deals.
The struggle for lenders is how to work most effectively with these marketplaces. “If you can acquire customers through only your own channels, then of course you’re going to do that,” says David Snitkof, chief analytics officer at Orchard Platform, which provides data, technology and software to the online lending industry. Otherwise, these marketplaces present a viable opportunity to expand distribution, he says.
GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND
The surge of new companies acting as marketplaces between borrowers and lenders of all kinds comes as the commercial real estate industry is finally coming up to speed with respect to technology. The commercial real estate business has been static for decades in terms of how loans are processed and originated, according to industry participants.
“The use of technology is going to be an enormous disrupting force in that space,” says Mitch Ginsberg, co–founder and chief executive of CommLoan, one of the newer marketplaces for commercial real estate lending. Commercial real estate lending is “probably one of the last industries that hasn’t been touched by technology, and it’s ripe for massive disruption,” he says.
CommLoan of Scottsdale, Ariz., was founded in 2014, but the marketplace has only been fully operational since 2016. The platform targets borrowers seeking $1 million to $25 million of capital for all types of commercial real estate loans. It works with more than 440 lenders—including banks, credit unions, commercial mortgage companies, private money lenders and Wall Street firms. Altogether, CommLoan says it has processed more than $680 million in commercial transactions.
Online marketplaces can help make the commercial real estate industry more efficient and transparent, says Yulia Yaani, co-founder and chief executive of RealAtom of Arlington, Va., another new online commercial real estate marketplace. “People are tired of paying huge fees as a result of the market being so opaque,” she says.
RealAtom began operating in 2016 and targets borrowers who are seeking commercial real estate loans from $1 million to $70 million. The lenders on the platform include banks, alternative lenders, insurance companies, pension funds, hedge funds and hard money lenders. The company processed $468 million in commercial loans in its first 11 months of operating, according to Yaani.
Another benefit of online marketplaces is that they “create a liquid, national marketplace where lenders all across the U.S. can bid on a borrower’s business,” says Ely Razin, chief executive of commercial real estate data company CrediFi, which operates the upstart CredifX marketplace. Historically people who own commercial real estate have only been able to get financing through a local relationship with a bank or broker. “For borrowers, this means more certainty of obtaining a loan and optimized capital not limited by the relationship with the local lender,” he says.
CredifX started operating earlier this year to match commercial real estate borrowers, brokers and lenders including banks, finance companies, mortgage companies, hard money and bridge lenders. The platform is for loans of $1 million to $20 million across all major property types in the commercial space. It matches borrowers with appropriate lenders using the information that parent company CrediFi collects and analyzes. The company declined to disclose how much it has processed in commercial transactions.
To be sure, it’s hard to say how the marketplace model will evolve over time and which players will withstand the test of time. Certainly a similar model has faced challenges on the consumer and small business lending side.
“I think the pure marketplace will become more rare as time goes on,” says Peter Renton, founder of Lend Academy, an educational resource for the P2P lending industry. “There are examples of successful companies with a pure marketplace, but they are rare and difficult to scale. The only well-established company that seems completely wedded to the pure marketplace is Funding Circle; pretty much all other companies have switched to a hybrid model of some sort,” he says.
Commercial vs Residential
While much of the recent growth has been within commercial real estate, there are also some marketplaces that cater to residential borrowers or offer a mix of commercial and residential opportunities.
Magilla Loans, for instance, started out in 2016 as a solely commercial marketplace, but expanded outside this silo because customers were asking for residential and other types of loans, says Dean Sioukas, the company’s founder. The company now connects borrowers with lenders for a whole host of loan types—commercial, residential and others like franchise loans and equipment loans. Lenders on the platform include roughly 130 banks, mortgage loan originators, accredited investors, credit unions and online non-depository institutions. The average loan size is $1.4M for business loans and $500K for home loans. Nearly $4 billion in loans has been channeled through the platform since January 2016; of that 70 percent is tied to commercial real estate, according to the company.
While there are marketplaces that focus on residential mortgage lending, some industry participants say that side of the business isn’t as appealing to new online entrants in part because the cost to acquire customers is really high and there are more challenges to working on a national scale.
“It may not be that commercial is more attractive. It may just be easier. Going directly to borrowers in the residential space has proven harder than many companies expected,” says Brett Crosby, co-founder and chief operating officer of PeerStreet, a marketplace for accredited investors to invest in high-quality private real estate backed loans. Experience seems to suggest that for residential mortgage origination, “it’s much better to have a good ground game and know your local market,” he says.
To be sure, as the online market for real estate matures, it’s not so surprising that companies would shift business models to find their own sweet spot. RealtyMogul.com is one example of a company that has morphed over time. The online platform began operating in 2013 in both the residential and commercial space, but has since moved away from the residential business. Accredited investors, non-accredited investors and institutions can use the platform to find equity or debt-based commercial real estate investment opportunities, and borrowers can apply for private hard money loans, bridge loans and permanent loans.
Money360 is another example of a company that has shifted gears. It started out as a pure marketplace, but changed its business model to become a lending platform in 2014. Now the online direct lender in Ladera Ranch, Calif., provides small-to mid-balance commercial real estate loans ranging from $1 million to $20 million. It’s one of the only companies targeting the commercial real estate space in this way and has closed nearly $500 million in total loans since 2014.
Gentry, the company’s founder, says he would expect to see more industrywide changes as the online commercial real estate business continues to evolve. The key to success, he says, is executing well and “knowing when to pivot when you realize something’s not working just right.”
Ultimately, Gentry predicts more online lenders will target the commercial real estate space. He says technology-based alternative lenders have an advantage because they can operate more quickly and efficiently while still being very competitive from a pricing perspective.
“You put all those things together (speed, efficiency and competitive pricing) and that’s what borrowers are looking for,” Gentry says.
