Last Chance to Comment on SBA’s Proposal to Lift SBLC Moratorium
January 4, 2023
In November, the Small Business Administration formally proposed a rule to lift the moratorium on licenses for Small Business Lending Companies (SBLCs). The moratorium wasn’t some pause borne out of the covid era. It’s been in place since 1982, creating a market of just 14 licensed SBLCs over the span of 40 years. Originally this moratorium had only gone into place because the SBA “did not have adequate resources to effectively service and supervise additional SBLCs” but now in modern times the SBA has determined there’s a problem, “that certain markets where there are capital market gaps continue to struggle to obtain financing on non-predatory terms.” Their solution? Lift the moratorium.
The proposal was published on November 7th and the public’s ability to comment ends on January 6th. One potential outcome of lifting the moratorium is that fintechs could potentially become licensed SBLCs. That appears to be a desired outcome for Funding Circle who shared their comment on social media on Wednesday.
“We need the SBA to lift the SBLC moratorium in order for us to apply to originate 7(a) loans nationally,” Funding Circle wrote. “This would allow us to leverage our platform technology and more than a decade of lending experience to expand access to 7(a) loans for underserved communities and to do so quicker, at a lower cost and with a superior customer experience.”
With more than 60 comments garnered on the proposal so far, Funding Circle is virtually the only fintech to have weighed in at all. A number of comments from the traditional finance realm were highly critical of the idea of allowing fintechs to become SBLCs, citing their supposed inexperience and perceived failures to responsibly dole out PPP funds. Others expressed a belief that the SBA still did not have the resources necessary to supervise additional SBLCs even after 4 decades and that the agency is already stretched too thin as it is.
“SBA should not expand 7(a) Program until it requests, and receives from Congress, an appropriation to fund the additional SBA staff necessary to supervise additional 7(a) lenders,” the American Bankers Association wrote.
There are complexities and nuances to the pros and cons of the arguments, but the opportunity to comment at all is running out. The deadline is Friday January 6th.
Anyone can submit their own comment here.
Update: Upstart, another fintech, had their comment processed by the SBA after this story was posted. The company also supports lifting the moratorium.
Just Jump In: Three Women Making Their Mark in The Industry
November 29, 2022Forty-Six percent of women make up the workforce in the financial services industry with only 6% of them being CEOs. Reshaping the narrative of men dominating the finance world, women in various components of the industry are making their mark. Sarah Kelly, Lindsey Rohan, and Heather Francis are three women that particularly stand out in the commercial finance industry.
Equipped at Birth
Born into equipment finance, Sarah Kelly got her start by working for the family business at KLC Financial. After a decade of becoming an expert in the trade, she spent some time in the medical equipment finance side of the industry before finally landing at Dedicated Financial GBC, where she is now the Director of Servicing. Dedicated has been experiencing growth, according to Kelly, as the company just hired five new employees in the last couple of weeks.
“I have a lot of confidence in the leadership team and was excited that they were open to having a woman on the team,” said Kelly. “They’ve welcomed me in wholeheartedly, they always ask for my opinion, I’m always willing to give it and I feel like we’ve really all connected to make Dedicated a great company.”
Kelly believes that women should support one another to do better. Even a little friendly competition to push each other to be their best selves doesn’t hurt.
“I believe that we can really show other women that you can be whatever you want to be in this industry, that there’s no limit, there really aren’t,” said Kelly. “I feel like some people think that there might be just because they are a woman but there really is no limit and we just need to get that word out there to them…”
Practicing the Laws of Finance
Finance wasn’t exactly the plan for Lindsey Rohan after law school. Working for a law firm in Long Island she dabbled in real estate closings, but with having two small children at the time, balancing work and motherhood were always at odds. Determined to have her own practice, she started Pollack Cooper & Fisher, P.C. where she worked as a real estate attorney for 8 years. She hadn’t ever foreseen commercial finance as her next career path, but a call from a family friend led her to join a merchant cash advance company.
“It actually became quite a good fit because it’s a lot of multitasking, a lot of looking at all the various aspects of a corporation and its life, and how you can protect it,” said Rohan, Deputy General Counsel at Basepoint Capital.
Handling the legal infrastructure of the company, building out departments to make sure there are checks and balances, and making sure all the collections teams abide by the regulations are routine in Rohan’s schedule. Having much success in her position, a notable point in her career has been about building the Alternative Finance Bar Association. The AFBA was created to facilitate the exchange of information with attorney members concerning alternative finance.
“What’s interesting about this is that while the industry itself is male dominated, most of the dominant attorneys in the space are women,” said Rohan. “Some of the largest originators, the General Counsel are women. The leading compliance and regulatory firm, the two attorneys that lead the group that handle commercial business are both women. And that’s an interesting dynamic.”
Working in a predominately male-led industry can have its challenges but Rohan claimed she never found it to be anything that’s held her back. Acknowledging at conferences that only about 10% of attendees are women while the rest are men, she does not believe it has had a negative impact on growth. Rohan agrees it’s important to support women in every endeavor and to not shy away from positions in this industry.
“Just do it, just jump in,” said Rohan. “Don’t hesitate, you’re in control. The amount that you learn is the amount that you allow yourself to be exposed to.”
Funding with Francis
Graduating with a degree in Health Promotion and Education, Heather Francis took a left turn into finance. Working for a private equity firm, she managed portfolios as well as oversaw many others. That position became her crash course into the industry, fueling her relationship into the financial services world and eventually encouraging her to start her own company in 2015, Elevate Funding. As CEO and Founder, Francis has had to do it all.
“I think owning my own business is accomplishment in itself, as well as being a mom and a wife,” said Francis.
Without dwelling on the industry being predominately male, Francis believes it has opened many doors for her. The women in the field are a “close knit group” propping each other up and sharing information, she explained. She believes it is important to support everyone that demonstrates drive and attitude to better themselves. That can be providing pathways, being a soundboard, introducing people, and simply giving out words of confirmation.
“I’ve always seen that the boys have a club, so do the girls, it’s never been anything that’s been a worry to me, or I’ve been like, ‘I’m being held back because of being a woman in finance,’” said Francis.
As a Board member of the SBFA, Francis helps solve problems in the industry and contributes ideas. And with rapid change surrounding the business, she has a hopeful disposition on where it’s heading as we enter a new economic phase. Experiencing the recession back in 09’, Francis saw the industry grow exponentially between 2009 and 2011.
“Traditional finance pulls back when times are hard, and we’re able to be a little bit more nimble and move around to adjust for it, but still keep funding,” said Francis.
Bonded through finance, women are navigating throughout the industry with strong personalities, outspoken voices, and confidence. Born into the field or pivoting their way in, they seem to be embedded into every aspect. While being a team player to everyone, these women continue to push their career forward with hard work, sticking to core values, and knowing who they are.
Have You Heard of Jeeves?
July 6, 2022
Founded in 2020, the expense management platform Jeeves, recently won the Small-Medium Sized Business Lender Award from the Canadian Lenders’ Association. Jeeves is a Y-combinator company providing financial services internationally, and with their recent success the company has been able to operate in 24 countries.
“I think the number one thing that all of us at Jeeves would agree on is that we intently listen to our clients, we understand that we try to understand the pain points and therefore try to match those pain points or client demands to work with our skill sets,” said William Lam, Jeeves General Manager of North America.
Lam oversees the market activities for the US and Canada. An expense management platform, which the company labels its product as, is essentially a platform used to track expenses. Compared to platforms like QuickBooks, Jeeves integrates with the software rather than competes against it.
“We focus on providing financial services, not accounting software, for international startups and fast-growing companies. We are excited to continue to enhance the Jeeves platform and integrate with more accounting software in the near future,” said Lam.
According to the Dictionary, the term Jeeves is defined as a butler or valet which resonates with the behavior that the company tries to model.
“We want to remind ourselves, that we need to be providing the type of services and products that our clients need, and nothing beats a happy client. And therefore, we came up with that name, Jeeves, and that’s the mode of writing that our CEO and founder has been living on a daily basis with the rest of his team,” said Lam.
During Covid many businesses suffered tremendously in Canada, but for Jeeves it helped the company to grow and expand.
“For us as a company, as a FinTech company, that aspires to provide financial services globally, I think the pandemic fueled growth, and we’re experiencing like 900% growth since our Series B,” he said.
For loans, Jeeves focuses on corporate card solutions which upon approval allows clients to get funds in 48 hours and can be paid back in 12 monthly payments.
“So specifically, we launched our growth capital products as of just last month in June. Growth capital is a non-diluted revenue-based financing that’s very suitable for a lot of SaaS businesses specifically, and the clients are able to get the loans,” said Lam.
Lam believes there is still a lot of work to be done to complete the vision of becoming a global finance company with hopes of launching in more countries, more products, and more news to share.
“We service a lot of the small businesses as far as like unicorns, or unicorn startups, we’re very proud of the achievement so far. But I think that this is just the beginning,” he said.
Deal Gone Bad? Next Stop Arbitration
June 20, 2022
When a funder is unable to resolve a breach of contract with a customer on its own, litigation may seem like the only option left. But there may be an alternative, a process known as arbitration.
“Arbitration is a creature of contract,” said Zachary Meyer, a partner at a law firm. Meyer is also the co-founder and Chief Administrator of RapidRuling, an arbitration forum that has recently experienced an uptick in cases from the small business finance space. An arbitration forum is an alternative to the courthouse, where disputes are adjudicated by an arbitrator instead of a judge. It’s binding. The prevailing party, for example, can take an arbitrator’s award to the Court and turn it into a judgment.
Meyer told AltFinanceDaily that part of the original vision for RapidRuling was an entirely online system that would prevent one or both parties from having to incur travel costs to participate. The overall cost of arbitration for a respondent in Montana, for example, would go up if they had to pay for a flight to New York City just to appear for it. “It’s beneficial for the [respondent],” Meyer said.
But in 2019 when RapidRuling first launched, the industry was already well accustomed to relying on AAA, the acronym for the American Arbitration Association. AAA, which was founded in 1926, resolved more than 300,000 total cases in 2019 alone. But then, Covid hit.
“It was like a perfect storm,” Meyer said. As the court system ground to a halt and struggled to move online, an all-online arbitration forum like RapidRuling suddenly had significant appeal. Meyer explained that the forum’s low filing fee compared to alternatives also grabbed attention. It understandably took off.
But the path to arbitration, including which forum to rely upon, may all hinge on the original contract itself, which a funding company’s attorney should carefully draft. Copying and pasting a random contract off the internet, for example, carries great risk, Meyer explained, because one may later discover a boilerplate arbitration clause to be limiting or disadvantageous.
RapidRuling’s website describes its arbitration process in four steps:
1. Submit Your Dispute
2. Wait For Opposing Party To Respond
3. Arbitrator Reviews Submissions
4. Receive An Arbitration Award
Contrast that value proposition to litigation, which depending on the circumstances could be drawn out for years.
RapidRuling seeks out arbitrators that are well-qualified, fair-minded, and diverse. “We have a panel of six arbitrators right now,” Meyer said, “and we’re looking to add more.”
Canadian Lending Looks Strong Post-Pandemic
January 11, 2022
After having their entire industry threatened by pandemic-induced restrictions, the Canadian alternative finance space has started 2022 off with a bang. Canadian lending saw billions in growth, as the industry hopes to utilize fintech’s technology and the government’s new take on open banking to bring their industry back to full swing.
“Main Street small business recovery is looking very strong for 2022 as restrictions ease moving into the warmer weather,” said Tal Schwartz, Senior Advisor for the Canadian Lenders Association. “However, in the short term, lenders are paying close attention to the Omicron variant, and particularly how aggressive the federal government is prepared to be in terms of sustained subsidies.”
Despite the uncertainty of the next several months, Canadian finance seems to have a healthy balance of offering modern financial products alongside an effort a return to normalcy. The crypto-lender Ledn raised $70M USD for the world’s first crypto-secured mortgage product, while the BNPL company Flexiti received a $527M facility from the National Bank of Canada. Merchant Growth, a small business lender, also raised $4m in equity financing.
According to Schwartz, most lenders who stayed in business used the last year to deeply invest in their technology across the board.
“[Lenders] have equally repositioned themselves in ways that better service a post-pandemic SMB clientele,” he said. “There is significant effort among lenders to evolve into financial health dashboards of a business, rather than being viewed exclusively as a financing source.”
According to the numbers, there has been significant growth by two notable Canadian lenders that are acting both as a financial management tool and a lending source. Canada’s largest subprime lender goeast Ltd, and Borrowell, a mobile loan marketplace, achieved $2B in portfolios and 2M users respectively to end the year.
“Fintech platforms become more sticky and can capture more client data if they become a hub for business management, with financing simply being a component of their platform,” said Schwartz. “Fintech lenders are coming out of the pandemic much stronger and with a sharper mandate than before.”
Canada is Looking Forward to Open Banking
October 4, 2021
“It’s a fairly big deal,” said Tal Schwartz, Senior Advisor to the Canadian Lenders Association, when discussing the Canadian government’s renewed interest in alternative lenders after the recent Canadian election. As potential government officials from both parties discussed ideas about open banking in their election campaigns, such a conversation had been quelled by the “Big Five” Canadian banks— until now.
“The closer we get to some kind of entrenched regulatory framework, the better positions fintechs will be in to actually compete, get access to financial data, and raise money in an environment where there is regulatory certainty,” said Schwartz.
In August, the Canadian department of Finance welcomed a Final Report from the Advisory Committee on Open Banking that showcased a plan to modernize the Canadian financial regulatory system, with open banking and fintech in mind.
“Consumer-driven finance, or open banking, is already part of Canadians’ lives,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, in the report.
“Many use digital services every day to manage their money, to budget for expenses, and to make investments. Working towards a regulated, made-in-Canada system will make sure that we continue to enjoy a strong, stable, and innovative financial sector that is globally competitive, promotes consumer choice, prioritizes data privacy, and contributes to economic growth,” Freeland continued.
Schwartz said that the traditional oligopolistic structure of Canadian banking can offer advantages in times of financial crisis, but not when the government is shelling out money to help businesses during pandemic-related shutdowns.
“The reality was, if you’re a small business, you don’t have a credit relationship with a big bank, the only credit relationship you have is with an alternate lender,” said Schwartz. “By distributing money through big banks, in one sense, you’re not servicing customers the way they want to be served, and you’re cutting oxygen to a flourishing part of the innovation economy in Canada.”
Unlike in the United States, the Canadian government gave exclusive access of allocation to pandemic-induced federal assistance loans to the Big Five banks, leaving small business lenders relatively out to dry during that time. When asked about what issues he would like to see the new administration tackle first when it comes to alternative lenders, Schwartz mentioned the allocation of this type of money moving forward.
Other institutions outside of big banking in Canada are making strides in their effort to compete. Fintech giant Stripe announced hiring sprees for their new Toronto office last Thursday. Then there’s Nuula, a startup that aims to build a user-centric financial super app, announcing $120M in funding in early September.
To reach its full potential, Canadian fintech companies need the access to more data. The report recognizes the acknowledgement of the necessity this data is to fintech companies. “The scope of Canada’s open banking system in its initial phase should include data that is currently available to consumers and small business through their online banking applications,” it says. “Financial institutions should be allowed to exclude derived data – described as data enhanced by financial institutions to provide additional value to their consumers, such as internal credit risk assessments” the report reads.
“Historically, there hasn’t been very tech friendly or [Big Bank] challenger friendly regulations,” Schwartz said. “This is really the first time we’ve seen the political parties even mention issues of open banking and saying this will be a priority for our next government.”
“This has given the industry a lot of hope,” said Schwartz.
AltFinanceDaily to Livestream from the SEAA Show in Bonita Springs
May 21, 2021May 24th LIVE schedule: 4:45pm – 6:30pm
May 25th LIVE schedule: 9:00 – 10:45am, 3:00 – 4:00pm, 5:00 – 6:30pm
deBanked will be streaming live from the Southeast Acquirers Association conference on May 24th and 25th in Bonita Springs, FL. The payments show celebrating its 20th anniversary is expected to have nearly 800 people IN PERSON.
The livestream will be available at scheduled times at deBanked.com/tv/. We will be speaking with executives across the payments and small business finance industries.
AFC Trade Group Surpasses 100 Members
May 12, 2021
Two months ago, the Marketplace Lending Association and Online Lending Policy Institute merged, forming the American Fintech Council (AFC).
American Fintech Council has grown to 107 members. The trade group is a cross-section of payments, lending, legal, and data sectors of the fintech industry, set to lobby Washington lawmakers and set standards. The member list includes names like LendingClub, Varo, SoFi, Cross River, and Rocket Mortgage. The group also launched a Community Advisory Board, with Boston University and Cambridge departments of alternative finance working on “responsible practices in the industry.”
“The American Fintech Council is poised to play a critical role in the US regulatory landscape,” Colin Walsh, founder-CEO of Varo, said in a press release.
According to the website, the group’s core principles include:
1. Supporting the use of technology to develop financial services to enrich people’s lives.
2. Offering affordable, transparent, and responsible products.
3. Advancing financial inclusion and racial equity.
4. Embracing and supporting regulation that furthers and promotes responsible innovation.
Members must support a 36% APR cap on the cost of loans, adhere to the Small Business Borrower’s Bill of Rights, and offer “transparent products and fees.”
“We are thrilled to welcome these new members and leadership groups to the AFC team and look forward to working with them to promote policies that create an open and efficient marketplace that benefits everyone,” said Garry Reeder, CEO of the AFC. “Our members are constantly working to better serve consumers and communities around the country.”
