Confessions of Judgment in MCA Make the Evening News
January 21, 2019Erie County Clerk Michael Kearns is no longer processing Confessions of Judgment (COJs) in Erie County for merchant cash advance companies, according to a statement his office published this week. Prior to being elected Clerk, Kearns was an assemblyman in the New York State legislature.
On Monday night, Kearns appeared on Channel 4’s evening news in Buffalo to discuss why his office had made the decision. Both Kearns and the local newscaster cite a highly controversial story series published by Bloomberg.
A review by deBanked of the series, revealed that two Bloomberg reporters had performed little or no fact checking of their sources. In one instance, for example, Bloomberg featured a business that had allegedly been “wiped out” by a $40,000 predatory loan gone wrong. Public records confirmed however, that the business owners continued to pay themselves more than a $100,000 salary from that business and that they still had nearly a million dollars flowing through their bank accounts. Facebook painted a similar picture, as one of the owners openly bragged about owning a new Camaro Super Sport with racing stripes.
Neither reporter has offered any explanation for the inaccuracies in their reporting.
Despite this, lawmakers and the Governor alike have called for an end to COJs in business credit transactions. You can watch the evening news segment below:
Small Business Funding is Blasting Off
January 18, 2019Despite the pall of the record long partial government shutdown which has hurt brokers and funders of SBA loans, many companies and individuals in the online small business funding space are off to a very fruitful 2019. Below are some that we found.
After 15 years in the screen printing and embroidering business, Edward DeAngelis spent about four years learning the online funding business before creating Amerifi, a small business funding brokerage. Amerifi and DeAngelis, its CEO and founder, have had a very strong 2019 so far. Since January 1, DeAngelis said that Amerifi has facilitated $7,420,667 in funding. This is compared to $1,284,890 for the entire month of January 2018.
DeAngelis attributes this in part to his increasingly diversified product offering. Amerifi, located in Broomall, PA, offers term loans, asset backed loans, lines of credit and merchant cash advances, among other products. He said that he’s trying to develop a brand known for funding every deal, large and small. He also said that developing a solid team, which now includes eight salespeople, is very important.
“I’m not one for high turnover,” DeAngelis said. “I invest in my team. I spend plenty to provide good leads to all my guys and I treat my team well.”
DeAngelis said he provides his whole team with health insurance. Founded in March of 2017, Amerifi has so far brought nearly $49 million of funding to American small businesses.
Co-founder and CEO of Idea Financial, Justin Leto, said they have seen an uptick in volume starting in December of last year and carrying over into 2019.
“In the first week or so of December the volume wasn’t as high as we thought,” Leto said. “But then all of a sudden as we got to the end of the year, even up until New Year’s Eve when we thought there would be nothing going on at all, the volume was tremendous. And it wasn’t volume that we were just declining. It was really good paper coming in. And it has continued through January. The paper has been solid. The quality of the deals are very good.”
Idea financial, based in Miami, FL, provides a line of credit product, with 12 and 18 month repayment periods.
“We have a 650 minimum FICO, so we have to get the higher credit quality merchants,” Leto said. “And they’ve been coming. What I’ve seen is we have an approval for $100,000-$150,000 and it’s rare that anybody takes the full amount…If people are taking a percentage of the line and using it over time and continuing to draw over time for different projects, I think that’s a sign of a responsible borrower…I don’t see a recession coming.”
CEO of Accord Business Funding, Adam Beebe, told deBanked that it was doing about double the amount in funding this month compared to last January. Completely ISO driven, Beebe said that submissions over the past month or so have been up 30 to 40 percent but couldn’t attribute it to any one specific thing.
Founded in 2013, Accord funds MCA deals exclusively and employs over 20 people in its Houston-based office. Last year, it made a key hire to expand its marketing efforts.
“I’ve had more deals in the last two weeks than during any other two week period last year,” said Jarret Ortmann, Senior Lending Officer at Ironwood Finance in Corpus Christi, Texas.
He also said that he’s been seeing more deals coming in from his brokers. Ironwood provides working capital, equipment financing and collateral lending.
Capify Secures Massive Credit Facility from Goldman Sachs
January 16, 2019
Capify, which serves the UK and Australia markets, announced this morning that it has secured a £75 million (roughly $95 million) credit facility from Goldman Sachs.
“This credit facility validates our company as a leader in the marketplace and underlines the strength of our business model to provide simple, affordable and smart financial options to UK and Australian small businesses,” Capify founder and CEO David Goldin said.
The achievement is notable for a company that is not venture capital or private equity based.
“Capify is one of the leading small business providers in the UK and Australia,” said Pankaj Soni, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs Private Capital. “We have been impressed with the management team, business model and innovative finance solutions for small businesses [and] we look forward to supporting their growth in the years ahead.”
Capify provides MCA deals and business loans to small business merchants. Goldin told deBanked that MCA deals make up about 75% of Capify’s business in the UK, with about 25% in business loans. The ratio in Australia is the inverse, he said.
Goldin entered the UK and Australian markets in 2008 and said that they have become hyper competitive over the last three to four years. He acknowledged that both markets are still far smaller than the U.S. though.
“You don’t see these big crazy origination volumes [that you do in the U.S.]…[for us,] it’s about building a profitable, growing company.”
According to Goldin, another difference between the U.S. market and the UK and Australian markets is that the latter has embraced self-regulation much faster than the U.S. For instance, in Australia, there have been recommendations from semi-governmental organizations on how funders should perform, including the publishing of APR in contracts for business loans.
“These markets have moved quicker for self-regulation in the last two or three years than the U.S. market has moved in 10 years.”
This may be a matter of other countries learning from the experiences of the U.S., he said.
Goldin said that in addition to scaling Capify, the money from the facility will also be used to launch partner/broker programs in the UK and Australia. So far, the majority of Capify’s leads come from internal direct marketing efforts.
Capify employs more than 120 people divided between two offices, one in Manchester, England and the other in Sydney, Australia.
Goldin integrated the U.S. operations of Capify to Strategic Funding (now Kapitus) in 2017.
Coming Soon: The End of Confession of Judgments (COJs) in New York State
January 16, 2019
New York State plans to outlaw the use of Confession of Judgments (COJs) in small business loan contracts this year, according to details revealed in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s newly published Justice Agenda.
The proposal, dubbed “Stopping Predatory Merchant Cash-Advance Loans,” is a 3-part plan to:
- Codify an FTC rule that prohibits COJs in consumer loans
- Prohibit the use of COJs in small business loans under $250,000
- Stop lenders from exploiting New York courts for nationwide collections by requiring that any permissible confession of judgment enforced in New York courts have a nexus to business activity in New York
Cuomo’s proposal echoes calls from the State legislature in response to a series published in Bloomberg Businessweek late last year that speculated COJs were vulnerable to abuse.
Both the Assembly and Senate maintain a Democrat majority, the same party as Cuomo, increasing the likelihood that such a bill could become law.
The proposal is separate from a bill that was recently introduced at the federal level. The Small Business Lending Fairness Act, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Senators Marco Rubio and Sherrod Brown, call for a nationwide ban on COJs. That bill has not progressed, perhaps due in part to the government shutdown. Like New York, that initiative was a response to the series published in Bloomberg.
A review of Bloomberg’s facts by deBanked revealed highly questionable reporting. In one example, it’s claimed that a business owner had been so victimized by predatory lending that he’d been forced to sell his furniture just to feed himself. deBanked later determined that the “victim” was actually a multimillionaire TV station owner whose account of any such engagement with merchant cash advance companies was incredibly unlikely. The reporters have not responded to deBanked’s findings.
Zeke Faux, who co-authored the series with Zachary Mider, deleted his entire tweet history around the same time that deBanked uncovered strange ties between his editor and the New York Attorney General’s office. The AG is reported to have sent subpoenas to several companies in response to the stories.
On Monday, Faux and Mider reported that clerks in three New York counties, whose job, among other roles, is to enter legally compliant COJs into the public record, were revolting by refusing to process COJs submitted by merchant cash advance companies. Though a clerk’s duties is largely an administrative one, two that spoke on the record with Bloomberg were former state legislators. Erie County Clerk Michael Kearns, for example, who told Bloomberg News that he felt that the use of COJs was criminal, had actually drafted a bill in 2017 when he was an assemblyman that sought to regulate cash advances of a different sort in the litigation financing industry. Although Kearns is a Democrat, he has historically enjoyed support from the Republican Party.
Orange County Clerk Annie Rabbitt and Richmond County Clerk Stephen Fiala, who are rebelling along with Kearns by refusing to enter COJs, are registered as Republicans, demonstrating that the movement is crossing party lines.
According to deBanked, less than half of 1% of all MCA transactions have resulted in the filing of a COJ, despite Bloomberg’s insinuation that the outcome is common or typical.
Among the most prolific filers of merchant cash advance COJs, deBanked found, is Itria Ventures, LLC, a company affiliated with Biz2Credit. Itria filed more than 50 in the last two months. Biz2Credit’s CEO, Rohit Arora, is a writer for both CNBC and Forbes.
Why Strategic Funding Rebranded as Kapitus
January 15, 2019
Today, Strategic Funding announced the launch of a new brand identity, including a name change. Strategic Funding will now be called Kapitus.
“We had a name that was very well respected,” said Kapitus founder and CEO Andy Reiser. “Everybody loved our name, quite frankly. They loved it so much, they all copied it. You can’t trademark ‘Strategic Funding.’ It’s too generic.”
Kapitus, spelled this way, is not a word in any language, which makes it easier to trademark.
“We wanted to separate ourselves in a way that is clearly identifiable,” Reiser said. “It’s an easy one-word name [that] symbolizes stability and strength. It’s ‘capital from us,’ if you want to break it down.”
Reiser said that the company has been relatively quiet over the last three years, but they have been advancing all along, and they are particularly proud of their brand new ISO portal. According to Reiser, the new portal helps ISOs better understand their book at Kapitus and allows brokers to generate a contract quickly without having to call them. The company has an in-house marketing team, but well over 50% of its business comes from the ISO channel.
Kapitus provides a variety of financial products, including equipment financing (they have an in house equipment leasing division) and factoring (they have a small internal factoring group). They also offer business loans, lines of credit and MCA deals. But the company’s largest portion of its business – more than 15% – comes from its Helix Healthcare Financing product, which finances healthcare practitioners like doctors, dentists and veterinarians.
Unlike other funders of healthcare practitioners that may offer financing terms up to 18 months, Kapitus offers terms of up to 10 years as long as the merchant satisfies its requirements. The company also funds a considerable number of healthcare-related businesses, like medical equipment providers. Otherwise, Reiser said that Kapitus has a diversified mix of merchants, from restaurants to manufacturers.
Reiser said that about 15% of Kapitus’s business consists of deals above $150,000 for which they have a seperate team. They do deals as high as $750,000.
When operating under the Strategic Funding name, there was a payment servicing division of the company, called Colonial Servicing. That entity will remain, but will be woven into the new Kapitus name.
Founded in 2006, Kapitus employs 240 people divided among three offices. The headquarters is in New York and there is an office with about 30 people in Arlington, VA, and a Dallas-area office with about 35 people working in collections and customer service.
How One Broker Moved from One-Man Home Office to 23 Person Shop
January 7, 2019Zach Ramirez started the brokerage company ZR Consulting from his home in Orange County, CA in June 2018. He was generating leads and making phone calls, often in a hushed voice because he was also looking after his six month old daughter.
“That was difficult, having a baby and with my life savings in the business,” Ramirez said.
But he had three brokers working remotely for him and things were working pretty smoothly. That number was growing by the time deBanked profiled him in August.
His fledgling business was manageable until he got to six brokers. At this point, the 29 year-old Ramirez said his home office was starting to feel like a call center.
“All day, I was answering calls to help them,” Ramirez said. “‘Zach, I have a question about this merchant, Zach, can you help me close this deal?’ It gave me a ton of anxiety.”
Ramirez realized that it would be much easier to manage employees from a brick and mortar space. So he found the company an office.
“Technically, we could have stayed at home,” Ramirez said.
And he acknowledges that some brokers can make a nice living working from home.
“But I want to have the biggest ISO,” Ramirez said.
With this as his goal, he said it makes the most sense to have everyone under one roof. If he’s having a large meeting, he wants to know that everyone is paying attention and not driving or playing a video game as they could on a conference call.
“It was difficult to manage salespeople and to track everything, like how many leads we generated in one day? How many leads does it take for me to fund one deal? How much money does the average deal bring me?”
Having his brokers work remotely made keeping track of these numbers even harder. Ramirez still has a couple of people who work for him remotely, but he said that 95% of his employees, or 23 people, now work at their office in Anaheim, CA. Ramirez said that the office was much too big for them with just six people at the beginning.
“We could hear echoes bouncing off the walls,” he recalled.
But now with 23 people, mostly brokers and some support staff, Ramirez is actually planning to expand into an office next door.
“[As we grew in the office,] we just re-invested every penny we earned back into the company,” Ramirez said. “We upgraded our computers and furniture and we put people on W-2s. We gave our employees a 401k right away. I think it’s important to really treat your people right.”
Ramirez acknowledged that he can’t make changes to the business as quickly as he used to. With more than 20 people, he said that costs go up dramatically and therefore decisions have to be much more calculated.
“It takes time to move the ship,” Ramirez said, “and if you’re not careful, everyday can be consumed by the small stuff.”
That’s why he stresses the importance of delegating roles to others.
“It’s the only way to free up your time so you can focus on the bigger picture,” he said.
Now, he said that he very rarely speaks to funders anymore. He has two processors on staff whose job is to organize the paperwork from the brokers and send it to the funders. They organize the company pipeline, he said.
Ramirez said that it can be quite difficult to find the right mix of funders.
“Some funders who you think will be great turn out not to be and other funders who you’ve never heard of turn out to be real diamonds in the rough,” Ramirez said.
And like many brokers feel, Ramirez agrees that when it comes to funders, less is more.
“Having a very precise and small list of funders is incredibly important…because it simplifies your process [and] having a simple process is one of the keys to scaling your business,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said that a common mistake brokers make is to test out a bunch of brokers all at once. He said that brokers need to try working with new funders intelligently, which means one at a time.
“When you bring on a new lender, you carefully watch every submission to them,” Ramirez said. “You want to make sure they’re not backdooring you. So usually you want to put your phone number and your email address in the contact info so you can catch them if they’re trying to be sneaky. [If they are,] they’ll call asking for the client and you know you only sent that deal to one lender.”
He’ll sometimes then pretend he’s interested and record the call. On about three occasions, he said that he has sent recordings like this to the backdooring lender and he’ll write “this is why I don’t send deals to you.”
Ramirez’s small group of trusted funders are OnDeck, National Funding, BFS, and Orange Advance.
As Ramirez expands, he says he only hires brokers by referral. He said that 90% of his business is short term business loans and MCAs, and 10% is SBA loans and real estate transactions.
Ramirez said that so far, ZR Consulting has originated $15 million in deals since inception and has earned $1.5 million in revenue.
For Some Brokers, Funding Never Sleeps
January 4, 2019
While holidays, including New Year’s Eve, are usually slow days for funding, for some brokers this year, New Year’s Eve was a strong day.
“New Year’s Eve was not a slow day here,” said Elana Kemp, a broker at Fundomate, in Los Angeles, who was in the office that day. “It was amusing to see so many people looking for money on the last day of the year. I’m also a procrastinator, so I can relate,” she said.
Zach Ramirez, Founder and Managing Director of ZR Consulting, LLC in Orange County, CA, said that New Year’s Eve was the second biggest funding day for his company in December, despite the fact he told his brokers that it was an optional work day, he said.
At the same time, for many other brokers, business was on the slow side, as expected. John Celifarco of Horizon Financial Group in Brooklyn, said it was a good day to organize and prepare for the new year. Meanwhile, Joe Cohen, of Business Finance Advance in Brooklyn, said he generally doesn’t go to work on major holidays.
“The holidays are to enjoy, regenerate and spend time with the family,” Cohen said. “That’s why you’re working anyway.”
What We Learned About RapidAdvance From RapidAdvance’s Planned Securitization
January 1, 2019
RapidAdvance is raising money through their first-ever securitization. This is what we’ve learned about the company as a result so far, thanks to the bond ratings process:
2017 origination volume: $260 million | See how this ranks against their peers
Lifetime funding volume: > $1.5 billion
Total shareholder equity: $54 million
Majority owned by: Rockbridge Growth Equity LLC
# of employees: 168
Notable strategic partnerships: Office Depot and Worldpay
Provides: Mainly Business loans (≈80%) but also merchant cash advances (≈20%)
Founded: 2009
Generates deals via: 62% ISO & Funding Partner Channel / 38% Direct
Other funders that recently did their first securitizations include Credibly and Strategic Funding Source.
