Industry News
Ocrolus Announces $4 Million Investment at LendItFintech Conference
April 9, 2018
Sam Bobley, CEOOcrolus, which provides analysis of financial documents, announced today a $4 million Series A investment led by Bullpen Capital with participation from QED Investors, Laconia Capital Group, ValueStream Ventures and RiverPark Ventures. The company says that its lean RegTech technology analyzes bank statements and other financial documents with over 99 percent accuracy.
“We’ve proven our technology as a disruptive solution for bank statement analysis,” said Sam Bobley, co-founder and CEO of Ocrolus. “Customer demand prompted us to begin analyzing loan applications, tax documents, pay stubs and more. We’re thrilled to have the capital to quickly expand our team, and ideal strategic partners to help us scale the business.”
Orcolus’ technology has been embraced by alternative funders that want to expedite their underwriting process.
“Data entry is not a core component of our business,” said Sol Lax, CEO of Pearl Capital. “Ocrolus has become our trusted partner for bank statement reviews, allowing us to scale volume with a leaner underwriting staff.”
The New York-based company, which has 19 employees, was founded in 2014, but wasn’t launched until 2016. Bobley told deBanked that the first few years were devoted to research and development and he also told us a little bit about the company name.
“The core technology that we built the system on is called OCR, for Optical Character Recognition,” Bobley said. “So the idea is that Ocrolus is an expanded and modern version of OCR…which can read statements with 85 to 90 percent accuracy, [while] Ocrolus reads statements with 99 percent accuracy.”
Broker Fair 2018 On Pace for Major Success
April 4, 2018
Broker Fair 2018 is on pace to be a major success!
Companies still wishing to become a sponsor of Broker Fair 2018 have until Friday, April 6th to do so. After that, no additional sponsors will be accepted.
The coming May 14th conference in Brooklyn, NY has already sold out of funder/lender and general admission level tickets. Only ISOs, brokers and those employed by them can continue to register!
The inaugural event has lined up dozens of awesome speakers and sponsors from around the MCA and small business lending industry. In addition to the 31 confirmed speakers and 50 sponsors, TV sales celebrity Ryan Serhant will be the keynote speaker of the event and will offer the audience sales tips. Serhant’s new TV show, Sell It Like Serhant premieres on April 11th.
Salespeople will also be in for a treat with the Be A Better Closer panel featuring Jared Weitz (United Capital Source), Joe Camberato (National Business Capital), Ed Tucker (Yellowstone Capital), Evan Marmott (CanaCap), and Justin Bakes (Forward Financing) as Moderator and the Marketing Your Business panel with Jennie Villano (Kalamata Advisors), Adam Stettner (Reliant Funding), and Tom Gricka (Babylon Solutions).
Industry captains will also teach you how they underwrite deals and tips for ISOs to succeed. Attorneys will walk you through the ins and outs of telemarketing law and legal advertising. There’s more of course, like networking with the funders, tips to raise capital, debates on industry issues, and checking out industry CRMs.
Afterwards, all attendees are invited to network upstairs at Westlight sponsored by RapidAdvance, while enjoying free food and drinks. Westlight offers full views of the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn’s William Vale.
To date, there’s never been anything like it. I hope to see you at Broker Fair.
Accord Business Funding Makes New Marketing Hire
April 3, 2018
Houston-based Accord Business Funding recently hired Aldo Castro to lead its marketing efforts. His title is Vice President of Sales & Marketing.
“We are excited to have Aldo join our team,” Adam Beebe, co-founder of Accord Business Funding, told deBanked. “Aldo comes to us with over twenty years of experience in business-to-business sales and marketing experience… [and he] will use his experience and feedback from the ISO community to help Accord find new ways of adding value to our partners’ businesses.”
Prior to Accord Business Funding, Castro worked as a strategic marketing consultant and co-founded two digital marketing agencies in Texas. Founded in 2013, Accord is a B paper funder with terms between four to eight months and merchants that include auto dealers and trucking and construction businesses, among others. The company of 20 employees is entirely driven by ISOs.
“Accord offers our ISO associates a unique combination of integrity, speed, and flexibility, helping them close their deals faster and easier,” Beebe said.
Caught! Backdoored Deals Leads to Handcuffs
April 2, 2018
A case of sneaking deals out the backdoor has resulted in another arrest at Yellowstone Capital.
According to someone familiar with the arrest and the events leading up to it, an employee was led out in handcuffs by police officers last week after Yellowstone’s management discovered she was diverting company deals to an outside party.
Yellowstone Capital would not offer comment on the matter, though last September, CEO Isaac Stern had told deBanked that “Yellowstone is investing tons of time, money, and effort to prevent data theft. We are doing everything in our power, everything, to address it, and we have even enlisted the assistance of an outside security firm.”
At that time, deBanked had obtained a photo of a female employee being led out by Stern and several police officers. That employee is said to have pled guilty to a felony theft charge after being busted for transmitting sensitive company deal data to a third party. It was the second such conviction deBanked is aware of that involved backdooring deals.
Though funding companies are generally reluctant to share the extent of their security methods, deBanked has learned that the level of technology being used by some players to detect data theft would probably come as a surprise to many perpetrators. Chances are that if you have engaged in it, it has been tracked or recorded.
“They think we don’t know, but we know the industry,” Stern told deBanked last year in reference to questions about security. “Ultimately we will catch you.”
Strategic Funding Builds Executive Team
April 2, 2018
New York-based Strategic Funding has announced the expansion of its executive team with the appointment of a new CFO and the addition of two new roles, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Product Officer.
“It’s a very competitive world and you have to be able to offer more capabilities and have the right players on the field,” Strategic Funding CEO Andrew Reiser told deBanked regarding the creation of these new positions.
Jeffrey Newman will take on the new role of Chief Risk Officer and his responsibilities will be to enhance Strategic Funding’s credit, risk, and fraud management models.
“We’re rolling out 3.0 of our credit risk modeling,” Reiser said.
As Chief Risk Officer, Newman will also play a key role in managing the company’s portfolio to ensure that it meets profitability goals. Newman is not new to this role. Since 2010, he was Chief Risk Officer of Consumer & Small Business for Citigroup.
The role of Chief Product Officer will be filled Arun Narayan, who has been with Strategic Funding since 2014, most recently as Senior VP of Risk and Analytics. Raiser said that this role is very data oriented and deals a lot with the customer experience, for both brokers and merchants. The role will be about “keeping the process smooth, fast and predictable,” Reiser said.
The Chief Financial Officer, not a new role, will be filled by Anthony Rose. Rose developed strategic and financial initiatives at JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and, most recently, at Dime Community Bancshares, a publicly traded finance company.
Founded in 2006, Strategic Funding primarily offers MCA financing and business loans, but also does some equipment financing and factoring as well. The company has 240 employees spread across four offices in New York, NY, Williamsburg, VA, Rockwall, TX, and Boca Raton, FL.
SBFA Braved Snow Storm for Spring Fly-In
March 23, 2018
The Small Business Finance Association (SBFA) had their Washington DC Spring fly-in earlier this week. SBFA members met with Karen Kerrigan, the President and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, on Tuesday afternoon, and Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) in the evening.
Despite the blizzard, a handful of members continued to meet with members of Congress on the Hill on Wednesday.
Founded ten years ago, The SBFA is a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring Main Street small businesses have access to the capital they need to grow and strengthen the economy.
Merchant Advance Capital Closes $30 Million Debt Facility
March 15, 2018
Canadian Merchant Advance Capital closed a $30 million debt facility from Comvest Credit Partners today.
“This is giving us significant runway,” Merchant Advance Capital CEO David Gens told deBanked. “For the next 12 months in particular, we’ve got great visibility as far as where our incremental capital is going to come from. This will allow us to focus less on fundraising and more on just building the business.”
Founded in 2010, Merchant Advance Capital offers several small business financing products including fixed term loans and business lines of credit. It also provides something called “The Good Cents Loan,” which Gens said he would like see more applicants for.
These loans are designed for businesses “that will positively impact the community or environment around them,” according to the company website. They require a more thorough application and the entrepreneur needs to convey to Merchant Advance Capital how the funds will help further their more socially or environmentally responsible cause. The company has only made a few of these loans which Gens said do not make money because the rates are so low.
This is the largest facility Merchant Advance Capital has gotten to date. However, Gens said that the business is primarily equity funded so that even as the business uses this new debt facility, it will still have more equity than debt.
Merchant Advance Capital generates most of its business through ISOs and partners and has two offices, one in Vancouver and the other in Toronto. Of about 50 employees, two-thirds work at the company headquarters in Vancouver.
2017 Small Business Financing Leaderboard
March 14, 2018Thanks to several companies filing their annual earnings statements and Funding Circle disclosing their USA origination figures for 2017, we’ve been able to put together a leaderboard in the small business financing space. This list is not comprehensive and omits key players like PayPal Working Capital and Amazon Lending.
| Company Name | 2017 Originations | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 |
| OnDeck | $2,114,663,000 | $2,400,000,000 | $1,900,000,000 | $1,200,000,000 |
| Kabbage | $1,500,000,000 | $1,220,000,000 | $900,000,000 | $350,000,000 |
| Square Capital | $1,177,000,000 | $798,000,000 | $400,000,000 | $100,000,000 |
| Yellowstone Capital | $553,000,000 | $460,000,000 | $422,000,000 | $290,000,000 |
| Funding Circle (USA only) | $500,000,000 | |||
| BlueVine | $500,000,000* | $200,000,000* | ||
| National Funding | $427,000,000 | $350,000,000 | $293,000,000 | |
| Strategic Funding | $393,000,000 | $375,000,000 | $375,000,000 | $280,000,000 |
| BFS Capital | $300,000,000 | $300,000,000 | ||
| RapidAdvance | $260,000,000 | $280,000,000 | $195,000,000 | |
| Credibly | $180,000,000 | $150,000,000 | $95,000,000 | $55,000,000 |
| Shopify | $140,000,000 | |||
| Forward Financing | $125,000,000 | |||
| IOU Financial | $91,300,000 | $107,600,000 | $146,400,000 | $100,000,000 |
*Asterisks signify that the figure is the editor’s estimate
