Broker Fair 2022 Has Sold Out
October 17, 2022
Tickets to Broker Fair 2022 sold out early Monday morning and tickets to the pre-show sold out a few hours later. Broker Fair, the industry’s largest annual event in NYC, is being held on October 24th at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
This event is where brokers, funders, lenders, and more gather for education, inspiration, and incredible networking opportunities to set themselves up for success. Broker Fair 2022 will mark AltFinanceDaily’s twelfth event since 2017.
If you’re a broker in the small business finance industry or commercial lending space, THIS IS THE EVENT TO BE AT!
For inquiries and questions about the event or your tickets, email events@debanked.com.
Why Participating in Industry Events Matters
September 29, 2022Guest Post by David Roitblat, Better Accounting Solutions
In just under a month, on October 24th, hundreds of members of the merchant cash advance community will descend on Times Square in New York City, at the New York Marriott Marquis, for AltFinanceDaily’s Broker Fair event. Every aspect of the industry will be represented, from brokers and ISO shop reps to specialized lawyers and accountants.
I will be there representing my business, Better Accounting Solutions, and it will be the upteenth time I’ve attended this tremendous event. But attending industry pow-wows was not how I envisaged spending my working hours at the start of my career.
When I worked at entry-level jobs in accounting firms, I didn’t think attending these events was worth the time and financial investment, instead choosing to believe that if I put my head down and worked for the 24 hours that the events were being held, I’d be positioning myself better for my professional future. And when I opened Better Accounting Solutions in 2011, that attitude didn’t change, especially now that it was my own time and money on the line.
This whole approach changed on the advice of a mentor a few years in. Hearing me explain how I thought the business could be scaling quicker than it was, he suggested attending, and participating, in an accounting conference that was coming up. When I pushed back with my familiar list of grievances, he didn’t attempt to refute them, instead repeating his advice, adding that how could it possibly hurt.
I attended that first conference, and haven’t looked back since.
All the elements of industry events that I had previously dismissed proved to be incredibly valuable and are an integral part of Better Accounting Solutions’ story, and how we got where we are today.
It’s why I encourage everyone that’s involved in the MCA business to shake off the headsets and get their heads out of the screens, and to take this opportunity to connect with real people.
Here are some of the key takeaways that I got out of that first experience that remain true to this day:
1. You never know who you’ll meet. Industry events bring together people from all different backgrounds and experiences, and you never know who you might meet and what kinds of connections you might make. Many of the people I met at these conferences, especially at Broker Fair once we had established ourselves in the MCA space, have gone on to be my mentors, advisors, supporters, clients, and friends.
2. It’s a great way to build your network. I came into the industry very green, feeling my way around by letting my work do the talking. But when I opened my own business, I needed to let my actual talking do the talking, and learn the art of networking. Networking is all about building relationships, and industry events provide an excellent opportunity to meet new people and start making connections that can help you in your career.
3. You can learn from others. When you’re working in your own space, it’s possible to inadvertently build a bubble around yourself, insulating yourself from current trends and happenings in the business. Industry events are a great way to learn from the experiences of others in your field and hear about the latest developments and advances.
4. It can help you find a job and advance your career. Sometimes, all you need is an opportunity to get your foot in the door, and events like Broker Fair are great places to find that chance. At industry events like these, it doesn’t take a lot to bump into industry figures and leaders, and if you connect with them and hit the right notes, these people just might be your next employer, mentor, partner or client.
As a token of gratitude for all that I’ve gotten from it over the years, Better Accounting Solutions is a sponsor of Broker Fair, a testament to our belief in this event. I’ve gotten tremendous value from Broker Fair, and it’s why I’m such an advocate for events like it.
We can’t let ourselves be held up by the reasons we think of to avoid attending, for a supposed lack of finances or time. Avoid naively thinking like I did, that you can grow in this business if you keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing until now, minimizing yourself in the very same circle. This is the best investment you can make in yourself right at this moment.
And once you take the plunge and make a firm decision to come, stop feeling guilty and that you should be contained in your office instead. Networking is real work, and can only come when you let go of that guilt and allow yourself to think bigger.
It’s at places like these where I met people that lent me their ears and gave me a chance, a major factor in Better Accounting Solutions earning our reputation as leaders in specialized accounting for the merchant cash advance industry.
It happened for me, and it can happen for you too.
Only Two Months Until Broker Fair!
August 24, 2022Broker Fair is officially TWO MONTHS away! Taking place at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, New York City, this event is shaping up to be the BIGGEST conference for the small business finance industry in all of 2022.
Don’t wait too late to register. These events sell out. Book your room and get your ticket now to secure your opportunity to network with and learn from who’s who in the small business finance universe!
PayPal, King of The Small Business Lenders?
August 3, 2022
PayPal didn’t offer precise quarterly origination figures for its “Working Capital” loan product on Tuesday, but it did reveal total originations since 2013. The number? 1.3M loans for a total of $25.6B across the US, UK, Australia, and Germany. Though there is an international component, the totals are higher than rivals OnDeck and Square Capital over the same time period.
“PayPal Working Capital (PayPal Funding Pro) expanded to France and the Netherlands,” PayPal said in its Q2 announcement, “providing SMBs with simple and flexible funding in minutes.”
The company’s small business lending operations draw little attention given that its payment business, which includes Venmo, is so massive. The size of it first became known in 2019 when it offhandedly claimed $4 billion in annual business loan origination volume for the year. That number shrank to $2.6B in 2020 during the pandemic, which was still more than all of its competitors.
In the US, its loans are actually made possible through WebBank.
AltFinanceDaily Happy Hour is SOLD OUT
July 17, 2022The AltFinanceDaily happy hour scheduled for July 28th in NYC has hit its registration limit.
Missed out? Register for Broker Fair 2022 taking place on October 24 at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square. This is one event that small business finance brokers won’t want to miss!
Early Bird Pricing for Broker Fair 2022 Ends Soon
June 30, 2022Early bird pricing to Broker Fair 2022, taking place this October 24th at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, ends soon. This large annual commercial finance expo has already sold out the top level sponsorships. Among the premier names are National Funding, Lendini, and Rapid Finance as Platinum Sponsors and Balboa Capital, Fintap, ROK Financial, and Ocrolus as Gold Sponsors.
This event brings together brokers, lenders, funders, vendors, and more from around the small business finance industry. Attendees can expect education, inspiration, networking opportunities, and more.
Large Fintech Companies Helping to Normalize Revenue Based Financing
May 6, 2022
With business increasing for wide-reaching financial technology companies like Square, Paypal, and Shopify, this has brought more attention to revenue-based financing products like the ones they offer. Henry Abenaim, Founder and CEO of Fundingo, said that it brings more businesses to the table.
“…you sometimes think it’s a small world or small group of merchants, and you really come to realize that it’s huge,” he told AltFinanceDaily. “And the more they’re serviced, the more they need, the more they grow. So it just feels like there’s just more awareness of the product, and then more merchants that are going to come in demand and ask for it, as well as these bigger players are always going to service only a subset of the businesses.”
At the same time, a greater public awareness of options could tighten margins for certain funding providers. “I think it’s going to make the merchants that are way more bankable… get lower price deals, so it’s going to hurt the margins, it’s going to hurt the profits,” Abenaim commented.
John Bulnes, Vice President of Business Development at Fenix Capital Funding, expressed how it is not yet determined what kind of effect the larger mainstream companies will have on the industry. “I do think it’s something that the larger first position MCA companies may feel the effects of first, because they’re going to be competing more or so with taking away clients from those companies first, as opposed to the companies that are smaller that are doing shorter term deals.”
As these big companies operate with larger capital bases, it may indeed become more difficult for smaller companies to compete.
“… it’s going to be something that’s going to constantly adapt and fluctuate as time goes, but I do see it as an expanding industry… it’s kind of a sign that when you see more commercials and we see these bigger companies jumping into the space, that it is something that’s going to continue to grow,” said Bulnes.
And commercials and ads are definitely increasing. One of the largest online small business lenders in the country was asked about their TV and radio campaigns during their recent quarterly earnings call.
“We’ve definitely been ramping [commercials up] hopefully with a little bit more diligence than OnDeck was running ads three or four years ago,” said David Fisher, CEO of Enova. “But we’ve definitely jump back into kind of broader base advertising in that business and it’s been working really well.”
Lender / Broker Ecosystem Transparency Solved
May 4, 2022What happens when a broker sends in a deal and is told it’s declined, only to find out that it was approved and funded for another broker? Usually, a very angry post on social media. The problem is that everyone wants maximum transparency, but how to get it? Who can trust who? What can be done? When will someone do it?
Well, call me insane, but I’ve taken a crack at solving it. And don’t get mad at me because I use the word blockchain because I promise this is not about crypto. Everything would still be ACH-based and recorded just as you already do it, but this little piece of tech would sit underneath it without any manual effort. All automated. No work. Also, it’s possible I’m just totally wrong or have missed some possibilities. You be the judge. Realistic or dream world?
1. Brokers and Merchants don’t need to use the blockchain or know how to use it.
2. A dev at a lender justs need to understand digital wallet addresses and a little feature about them called Non-Fungible Tokens to build or implement a third-party add-on of this. (These “NFTs” have nothing to do with art, they are just uniquely identifiable text files logged into the blockchain with metadata inside them.)
First, here’s my diagram:
Here’s what it’s doing:
1. When brokers sign up with a lender, the lender assigns a uniquely identifiable blockchain wallet address to them on an automated basis.
2. When a broker sends in a deal, the lender creates a unique encrypted hash of the applicant’s bare minimum identifiable data (like last name and EIN #). This hash is placed into a text file in plain english along with the applicant’s application data encrypted. (also automated).
3. The lender creates a Non-Fungible Token from the broker’s wallet address and sends it to the lenders’s official submission wallet. (automated). This wallet will show the NFTs for every deal ever submitted to this lender. Nobody will be able to reverse engineer info about the deals and only the broker who submitted the deal will be aware of what the hash of the deal is. This gives them a chance to view exactly when their deal was logged and if there’s any duplicate hashes in the wallet that would signal that same deal had already been submitted by someone else and when it was submitted.
4. If the deal is approved by the lender, the lender pays the broker and funds the merchant via ACH like normal. Then the lender creates an NFT with the same public hash and sends that one to its approval wallet. The original NFT sent to its submissions wallet is now sent to the broker’s wallet, signaling that they have been awarded the commission on this deal. (automated).
5. If the deal is declined, the lender creates an NFT with the same public hash and all the NFTs for this deal are sent to the decline wallet, signaling that the deal was killed and nobody was awarded the commission on it. (automated).
Every deal’s NFT has to eventually be moved to approved or declined. They can’t sit in submissions in perpetuity.
End result: brokers that submit deals can see if their deal has been submitted before and when it was submitted. Brokers can verify if the deal was funded, when, and if commissions were paid to someone. No actual money is changing hands via crypto (though there might be transactions fees to move NFTs around.) Investors and regulators can also examine the flow and if necessary, be given access to a private key so that they can unlock and view the metadata in the submissions, approvals, and declines themselves.
Naturally, everyone’s first question is: what happens if the lender tries to bypass this?
1. A broker who submits a deal that does not see an NFT created for it in the lender’s submissions wallet, already knows that the lender is trying to operate outside the system. Time to move on!
2. A lender that shows a deal was declined and commissions paid to nobody could be easily discovered if the borrower shows a statement with proof that they received a deposit. No need to speculate what happened. Time to move on!
3. A broker that submitted a deal first can show that its deal was logged first in the submissions wallet. Anyone on social media or the public square could also confirm that and the lender could not manipulate the data to play favorites.
4. Lenders that operate outside of it would show little-to-no submissions or approval volume, signaling to a broker that for some reason they do not want the anonymized data auditable.
5. Lenders that are not real that go around pretending to be a lender just to scoop up deals would be hard-pressed to provide the three verifiable wallet addresses showing the volume of submissions, approvals, declines, and the respective ratios for the latter two. If they can’t show that they’ve ever done any deals or paid commissions, even if you can’t see what the individual details are, they’re not real.
6. After a lender moves the deal’s NFT to a broker’s wallet to signal they’re being awarded the commission, it’s possible the lender does NOT actually ACH the broker the commission. In that case, the broker would have a nice verifiable public display that shows it was supposed to be paid the commission for all to see. Public pressure ensues.
7. If the lender secretly pays a broker the commission but then publicly marks the deal as declined so that another broker who sent in the same deal doesn’t suspect what happened, well then the broker who got paid is going to be suspicious that the lender could do the same thing to them. There’s an incentive to be honest.
8. Merchants need not know about any of this. It doesn’t concern them.
9. The broker does not interact with the blockchain in any way except in the case it just wanted to view the data.
10. The lender does not have to manually interact with the blockchain at all. The system would just be bolted on to an existing CRM. It would do all the above by itself.
