BFS Capital is Now Nuula
April 29, 2021
“The reimagined future of BFS starts now, and today I’m proud to announce that BFS Capital has become Nuula,” wrote BFS Capital CEO Mark Ruddock on LinkedIn. In a lengthy post, he explained that the company has shifted its “philosophy from solely selling loans acquired primarily from brokers, to providing a more holistic, customer-centric mobile app that entrepreneurs would find useful each and every day.”
“Nuula is a mobile application that gives small business owners instant access to critical business metrics anytime, anywhere.
It allows real-time monitoring of cash flow, personal and business credit activity, and social ratings and reviews. Small business owners know immediately if there’s an issue with their cash, credit, or reputation that requires action.
But this is just the beginning.”
“With regards to our legacy business, our team will continue to support our existing customers and partners as we transition all our services to Nuula,” he added. “Our existing customers will be the first to be offered a chance to experience Nuula. And over the next few weeks, our existing working capital customers will be able to unlock additional capital from the first of our Nuula ecosystem partners, with exciting incentives and in a way that is as seamless as possible. We expect to make that announcement soon.”
You can read the full post here.
The Death of A Thousand Financial Companies
April 28, 2021Unfortunately, Deleting Your Business May Not Be An Option One Can Risk.
In March 2021, AltFinanceDaily revealed that 7.5% of DailyFunder’s user base that had existed in March 2020, was lost during the pandemic. DailyFunder, of course, is the most widely used forum for small business finance brokers and the statistic offered one of the most compelling insights into the damage inflicted on the industry.
A loss was defined as a user whose email address ceased to exist. It was either deleted or the domain name was not renewed. It was a startling revelation. And yet, in a sign of optimism, DailyFunder added more new users in that 12 month time frame than were lost.
And yet, is anything ever truly deleted in the digital age? And how did it come to pass that the owners of these companies believed deletion to be a preferable outcome to transference? Surely as a thousand brokerages closed, there would have been an eager buyer to scoop them up, even if the sales price was for pennies?
And so I arrived at a theory, that companies that simply wound up and disappeared rather than sold themselves off, probably left behind a digital footprint that still drew in prospective customers, a path that ultimately led nowhere. A competitor might rejoice at that outcome but it’s not exactly a net gain because that customer may have decided to go somewhere else or nowhere else instead. Someone else’s loss wasn’t their win. Even the customer was a net loser. That could be resolved, of course, if the competition simply acquired the expired domain names of their fallen competitors, something that could be reasonably achieved for the price of ten bucks through any domain name registrar.
Outside of the small business finance industry, such tactics are commonplace. One can simply go on Godaddy’s domain auctions to see the never-ending revolving door of expiring domains which are often ranked and priced on the basis of how much traffic they stand to generate, mainly because of the past owners’ efforts.
According to WhoIsHostingThis, 70% of all web domains fail to be renewed 1 year after they’re purchased. “[41% of these expired domains] go on to be snapped up and registered by other users to potentially benefit and profit from,” they say. And there is nothing controversial about this. This is simply a standard of the world wide web. Your fallen online business is recycled as someone else’s marketing tool.
Applying that math to the small business finance industry at hand, that would mean that of 1,000 brokerage failures, 41% of the expired domain names are going to be acquired by someone else or they already have been. And if the expired domain only costs $10 (and they’re not all this cheap), then theoretically one could acquire the web traffic of 410 failed brokers for roughly $4,000.
WHOA.
The realization led me to conduct a controlled experiment, one in which I would try to prove this theory for a AltFinanceDaily story.
I bought roughly twenty expired domains, intentionally leaning toward older ones, domains that had been expired for 2-10 years rather than recent casualties of the pandemic. Once completed, I jotted down my hypothesis, that these domain names probably produced some level of prospective customer traffic.
When my experiment concluded, I became alarmed, even sick, over what the results taught me. Deletion, I learned, is an outcome that no business, let alone a financial services company, can afford to surrender themselves to.
Here’s why:
Among the first steps taken was to create a “catch-all” email account on each domain so that if a former owner of a domain came along and tried to contact me, I would get it no matter which address they tried and that I would be able to tell them that I had acquired it accordingly and even tell them my theory!
No marketing or anything was done for any of the domains. I simply acquired them and let them sit stagnant. I did not resurrect whatever their old websites were. And yet, I received thousands and thousands of emails, none from what I could tell were from former owners.
It’s important to state that I did not use these accounts to actually do anything, but that these vulnerabilities came to light by virtue of monitoring the inbound emails these domains accrued.
Some domain names still had control of social media accounts like business facebook pages and twitter accounts. Someone could not only acquire your old domain, but use it to resurrect and use dormant social media accounts, including being able to view all past private correspondence on them. Yikes.
Some domain names were still attached to active bank accounts, credit card accounts, or financial services. Correspondence regarding these accounts was still being transmitted to them. When you delete a domain, you need to make sure its access is revoked from every account you have, especially bank accounts. Some received NSF notices or were being subject to debt collection efforts.
Every domain name was subscribed to newsletters or communities or some service in which one could use to learn personal information or business information about the previous owner.
Unknown but likely is that some of these domains may have been the “lost password” email address of record for other accounts online, a particularly troubling thought.
As the litany of stroke-inducing vulnerabilities piled up, then came live correspondence. Lenders wanted to know where to send a still-owed commission, a borrower was reaching out for customer service, old business partners were trying to rekindle past relationships.
Presumably such domains could give someone access to portals or databases where previous customer data was held. This implies that not only is the old domain owner at risk but that business vendors that had not disabled access to their systems for the defunct users could also be at risk from nefarious actors now in control of email addresses belonging to former customers.
A nefarious actor could surely dream up still more ways to carry out compromising acts. I disabled incoming email altogether for the domains pretty soon into my aforementioned discoveries so that emails to those domains would simply bounce back and indicate to the sender that there’s nobody there anymore.
And my original hypothesis had been blown to smithereens. These domains generated no material web traffic of note, except for probing “bots” instead of human users. What I thought might be a hidden source of web traffic, a clever insight on internet marketing 101, instead turned out to be a glimpse into a business’s worst nightmare.
No matter how much one’s business has failed, control over the domain name should be preserved at all cost, that is unless, all of the above vulnerabilities are addressed first and completely.
Originally, the costs of this journalistic experiment were to be recouped by simply reselling the domains onto the public market for fair market value. Instead, they were simply cancelled, cast back in the sea anonymously, where anyone else could buy them and do whatever they want with them. I, however, made no effort to alert anyone’s attention to them.
The publication of this story was delayed as I, the journalist, had to weigh the merits of disclosing my findings. But as the data says, 41% of expired domains are going to get snapped up anyway. And true to form, I was actually outbid by other unknown buyers by some of the original domain names I had hoped to acquire for my experiment. A financial service company’s domain and all the vulnerabilities with it, were sold to bidders willing to pay $30, $40, or $50+ versus my $10-$20 or so budget. That seems a terrifyingly small cost. And I highly doubt they were journalists.
Perhaps those domains are generating web traffic, but if they’re not, one has to ponder why someone would want to acquire the lapsed domains of so many dead financial service companies. And post-pandemic, there are too many to count.
If the death of a thousand companies has taught me anything, it’s that even business failure needs a well thought-out security plan. Otherwise one risks death by a thousand cuts.
IOU Financial Funded $12.1M in March
April 8, 2021
IOU Financial originated $12.1M in funding to small businesses last month, the company revealed. It was IOU’s biggest loan volume month since the beginning of the pandemic.
The figure was included in an announcement regarding the company’s intention to repurchase up to $2M of Convertible Debentures.
“The move to repurchase corporate debt comes after a year of strategic initiatives as part of IOU’s Pandemic Resilience Plan that focused on reducing corporate expenses while reaffirming commitments from its diverse portfolio of funding sources and capitalizing on new opportunities to continue to support small businesses in 2020,” IOU said.
“IOU’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (‘Pandemic Resilience Plan’) put the Company in a position of strength to consolidate its stake in developing the opportunities ahead,” said Phil Marleau, CEO. “We are proud to be able to stand with our network of brokers and small business owners as we prepare for the economic recovery with great optimism.”
Before the pandemic, IOU originated $154M in funding for all of 2019.
Industry Ponders: Broker Blacklisting, or Certification?
April 5, 2021
It’s a concept that’s been thrown around the industry for years- swapped like business cards at meetups, conventions, and chatrooms. Shouldn’t there be a broker certification, database, or even blacklist for known bad actors?
As AltFinanceDaily petitioned the question, the industry responded with its naturally diverse responses. The problem: bad actors can keep getting away with shenanigans. The solution? Well, no one size fits all approach could work in the alternative finance industry, but a certification source may do the trick.
CEO of FundFi, Efraim “Brian” G. Kandinov, recently brought up the idea of a “Datamerch for Brokers.” Like a DNC list, Kandinov said there has got to be a way to sort out the known bad actors, scam artists, and even the brokers that play the funding houses by training merchants.
“I think opposed to a blacklist: a list that notes bait and switches, where the merchant was coached by the broker,” Kandinov said. “This way can go around a lawsuit or any fear of that, and the funder is free to choose once reading others’ notes.”
Kandinov said that most of his “problem files” show signs of brokers coaching merchants to start protesting deals after the clawback period ends. Get paid, pass the smell test during a 30-60 day waiting period, and then tell the merchant to jump ship on the deal or argue to lower the payments.
“If they were not [suddenly going out of business], they were calling in like a schedule to lower their payments. No way it can be that uniform unless they were being coached. The broker comes off as the good guy that he played the funding houses,” Kandinov said. “I think harsh means are necessary to expel these guys from the industry.”
Other funding side members of the industry have voiced their support for some type of broker record database. Kristen Ferrara, Director of Underwriting at The LCF Group based in New York, said that LCF pays a high expense to select ISOs. A vetting platform could be a great resource.
“I think it would be a good resource for funders,” Ferrara said. “We turn down about 50% of the ISOs who try to sign up with us. This resource could save funders millions of dollars in deals going bad from ISOs over-promising or committing fraud.”
On the other side of the country in San Diego, CEO David Leibowitz from Mulligan Funding said he is all for a way to help funders vet brokers. Mulligan is lucky to work with a trusted brokers network and drops a client like a broken elevator at the first sign of fraud or unethical behavior, he said.
“We are extremely careful about which brokers we do business with. If we see any kind of practice that we think is unethical, we’ll cut a broker loose in a heartbeat,” Leibowitz said. “Is there value in the sort of thing you’re talking about? I think there probably is because I think it makes vetting brokers for [funders] a lot easier, and it also allows brokers to differentiate themselves against their competition by their ethics.”
Leibowitz is a proponent of ethics as an indicator of value and said a certification could help members of the public tell the difference between good and bad funders and let funders spot good ISOs and bad ISOs.
A worry for some is that whatever company, organization, or site that hosts a broker ledger could face lawsuits for liability, could accept payments to make bad reviews go away, list competitors to hurt them, or be outright ignored by an industry always hungry for deals.
But industry lawyers seem to agree that a broker certification or blacklist would ultimately benefit the industry if provided from the right source. Patrick Siegfried, the Deputy General Counsel at Rapid Finance, said that whatever agency would be rating brokers would need its own trusted reputation.
“To have a legitimate background or rating system, it needs to be done by an independent third-party that has its own credentials,” Siegfried said. “I think that’s a big reason you don’t see many third-party or private rating systems.”
Siegfried said one option that ensures a true third-party point of view is a government agency taking care of a broker tracking system. Another option would be an industry coalition, but then it’s a question of cost- Who is paying to staff and maintain a complaint system?
“At the end of the day, having a good industry regulator is a benefit for the industry,” Siegfried said. “It will allow a third-party, government entity to vet brokers in terms of licensing and then maintenance, looking into valid complaints.”
As conversations across the country point toward a licensing regime, Siegfried said it’s a sign the industry is maturing and that one day there will be a government agency to lodge complaints with and to actually vet brokers in the space.
Steve Denis from the Small Business Finance Association (SBFA) proposed a solution to the issue. He said that in the works right now is an SBFA-sponsored certification program.
“We started just looking at brokers and thinking about how to certify them,” Denis said. “We think that it’s the time, from the feedback we’ve gotten from regulators, that we launch a true industry-wide certification.”
In the coming months, brokers may be able to apply for certification when the program rolls out. Instead of a ‘blacklist,’ Denis said brokers could set themselves apart as trusted providers by going through a basic background test or industry knowledge checks.
“If you’re a broker and you can’t get certified, then there’s probably some issues,” He said. “So our hope is if you carry a certification, that’s sort of a message that you are a good broker.”
When it comes to government regulation, Denis said he is still cautious. While he 100% expects certification programs to crop up for state licenses, he thinks no government agency can achieve what an industry coalition can do.
MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage
March 15, 2021
March Madness began with Mortgage madness, in line with 2021. College Basketball fans came to a boil last week when the Michigan Spartans briefly rebranded to a longer name, MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage.
Fans immediately took to Twitter to complain, as competitors imagined if their beloved teams were also suddenly named after fintech companies. Shortly after, Michigan released a statement claiming they would not be changing their name:
STATEMENT FROM MSU ATHLETICS (MARCH 12):
Michigan State is not renaming its men’s basketball team. While this is a new extension of the partnership for Rocket Mortgage with Men’s Basketball, this is not a first-of-its-kind sponsorship for the Spartans or a new concept in professional or collegiate team partnerships.
Though as some users and news media pointed out, the suffix will still be attached to the team name everywhere at its home games: the rollback is semantics, Rocket Mortgage will still be included in the name, and the logo will appear across the stadium.
“Michigan State University is very important to our company. It is the alma mater of our Founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert, me, and many team members throughout our organization,” Rocket CEO Jay Farner said. “We are honored to contribute to the university that has prepared so many of us for success.”
Strapped for cash, the Detroit Free Press reported the Michigan athletic department is projected to lose $75 million due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yahoo Sports writer Jack Baer said that when sports teams take on a corporate name, like the New York Red Bulls, “the business in question actually owns the team rather than giving them millions of dollars to slap their name onto a scoreboard and promotions. In that respect, the MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage would be something akin to a little league team getting some help from a local business.”
Rocket Co-founder, Dan Gilbert, has previously donated at least $15 Million to Michigan’s athletics program, overhauling the Breslin Center stadium. Now his Rocket Companies logo will appear everywhere throughout the building.
Some fans still poked fun after the school walked back its original announcement.
Bummer. I was looking forward to taking my family to United Wholesale Mortgage Breslin Center to see the MSU Spartans presented by Rocket Mortgage play on the Auto Owners Insurance Tom Izzo court for a game day experience presented by Farm Bureau Insurance.
— Ryan Peterson (@RyanPD_Peterson) March 12, 2021
Broker in Early Twenties Builds MCA Business in Less Than Three Years
February 10, 2021
Davron Karimov, a 22-year-old MCA broker, went from $10k in debt to collecting $200k a year in commissions. It took less than three years, and Karimov shared his journey on his personal, sometimes chaotic, yet always informative YouTube channel.
The Staten Island native said he first started at a Long Island City shop and quickly made some early deals, eventually leaving to start his own firm, FunderHunt, and recently opened an office in Miami.
But do the YouTube videos help him make deals? Of course they do, Karimov says, and he not only gets deals through his video platform but he also get questions from other MCA brokers who reach out for help.
“Of course, we get people all the time calling in, people that have questions, people in the industry need help with their merchants,” Karimov says. “I started around 2018, and there was no info on YouTube about business funding, a huge void online. I stepped up and thought I could be the one to supply info.”
Nearly three years later, Karimov has built an expanding business while helping others through the struggles of being a broker and CEO in the MCA world. In the last year alone, the pandemic caused applications to explode, Karimov says.
“It’s been better than ever; I’ve never seen so many applications in March and April; they were just soaring,” Karimov says. “And then I’ve never seen so many applications get denied because of the industry at the time everything was shutting down.”
It was a time to capitalize if your shop was strong enough to survive what Karimov called the “dark ages” for MCA. If you survived, you get to reap the reward of a capital-deprived market, he says.
“The whole crisis took out so many funders that were just not good, they probably were supposed to go out of business a long time ago, but this accelerated it,” Karimov says. “It took out all the bad funders and replaced them with people that are solid, fast, and have everyone’s best interest at heart, from the merchant to whoever the ISO is.”
According to Karimov, 2020 solidified who is a real player in the game. Launching a new office himself, Davron says he enjoys sunny days in Miami while it is twenty degrees in-between blizzards in New York. Though snow wasn’t the reason he moved, but instead the funding environment.
“Everyone has been warm and welcoming [in Miami], the government knows what this is, and that’s what we do. We try to educate them: not a lot of people know here about this; it’s like it’s a secret,” Karimov says. “If you go to New York, it’s like everybody knows, there are so many shops there. But here, it’s kind of rare to see someone that knows what a cash advance is.”
Compared to New York’s increasingly restrictive funding ecosystem, the Florida space is open to growth. That’s exactly the environment Karimov hopes to profit from, expanding his business in any way that will be geared toward helping businesses.
“I’m not a huge fan of diversification,” Karimov says. “I like doing one thing. But we opened up an office in Miami; we’re bringing experienced people in and trying to fund deals as fast as possible. We’re maybe looking to develop into offering a debit card, whatever is in the business’s best interest.”
2021: The Year of Uncertainty
January 7, 2021
For alternative lenders and funders, 2021 is starting out with a question mark and will lead (hopefully) to a resounding exclamation point of recovery.
Many industry participants waved goodbye to 2020 with relief, and are welcoming a bounce-back in 2021, despite some trepidation about potential bumps along the way and how long a full recovery will take. While things started to improve somewhat toward the latter half of 2020 after grinding to a halt earlier in the year, the pandemic is still raging, with economic growth highly dependent on the immunization trajectory. Then there’s the incoming Democratic administration and the possibility of new rule- making, along with January’s runoff elections in Georgia that could change the balance of power in the Senate, and thus impact the new president’s law- making abilities.
Beyond these macro-issues, the funding industry is also dealing with its own uncertainties. Small business lenders and funders have been hit particularly hard, with underwriting decidedly more difficult in this environment. Some industry players have been forced to find alternative revenue streams in order to ride things out. Not only that, but there are scores of small businesses still reeling from pandemic-induced shutdowns and lighter foot traffic, with some gloomy estimates about their ability to bounce back. Many alternative players are weighing diminished returns against a widely-held bullish outlook for the industry long-term. Many are simply hoping they can hunker down and stick it out long enough and to avoid additional carnage and consolidation that’s widely expected over the short-term.
Ultimately things will get better, but it’s unclear precisely when, says Scott Stewart, chief executive of the Innovative Lending Platform Association. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride for the next year to figure out who is going to be able to survive,” he says.
Here’s a deeper dive into how industry participants see 2021 shaping up in terms of the challenges, competition, M&A, regulation, changing business model, expansion opportunities and more.
SPECIFIC CHALLENGES FOR SMALL BUSINESS FINANCERS
Companies that focus on consumer financing haven’t struggled quite as much amid the pandemic as their small business brethren, and they could continue to see demand grow in 2021. Even amid high unemployment rates, many consumers still need loans for home repairs or as a stop-gap to pay necessary expenses, helping to mitigate the impact on firms that focus on personal loans.
Small business financers, however, got pummeled in 2020 and the situation remains precarious, especially given the prognosis for small companies broadly. Consider that 163,735 Yelp-listed businesses closed from the beginning of the pandemic through Aug. 31—at least 97,966 of them permanently. Further underscoring how dire the situation is for small businesses, 48 percent of owners feared not earning enough revenue in December to keep their businesses afloat, according to a recent poll by Alignable, an online referral network for small businesses. What’s more, 50 percent of retail establishments and 47 percent of B2B firms could close permanently, according to the poll of 9,204 small business owners.
A SHRINKING COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
For many lenders and funders, the latter part of 2020 proved more successful for originations, though business is still a far cry from before the pandemic. A number of players who suspended or reduced business operations for a period of time during the first wave of the pandemic have dipped their toes back in and are in the process of trying to adapt to the new normal. For some, though, the challenges may prove too great, industry observers say. Given that many brokers and funders that were on the fringe have been hurt by the pandemic, more shake- out can be expected, says Lou Pizzileo, a certified public accountant who advises and audits alternative finance companies for Grassi in Jericho. N.Y.
And, with fewer competitors, there will be more of a need for those who are left to pick up the slack, says Peter Renton, founder of Lend Academy. Beyond being a lifeline for many alternative financers, PPP loans helped open the eyes of many small businesses who hadn’t previously considered working with anyone but a bank. In the beginning, when it was so difficult for small businesses to get these funds, they looked beyond banks for options and some found their way to online providers. This could be a boon for the industry going forward since alternative providers are now on the radar screen of more small businesses, says Moshe Kazimirsky, vice president of strategic partnerships and business development at Become.
He predicts that larger, stronger players will gradually ease some of their lending and funding criteria early on in 2021, but no one is expecting a quick revival, with some predicting it could be well into 2022 before the industry is on truly stable footing. “I think it’s going to be a very slow recovery,” Kazimirsky says.
M&A
In 2020, the industry saw bellwethers like Kabbage and OnDeck get swallowed up, and with so many businesses pinched, there are likely to be more bargains ahead from M&A standpoint, Pizzileo says. “The damage from Covid is palpable; we just haven’t seen the real impact of it yet,” he says.
No matter what product you are providing, if you’re a smaller player who can’t find your way, you’re going to have a hard time staying in business,” says Stewart of the Innovative Lending Platform Association. “There will be some collateral damage going into next year,” he predicts.
In terms of likely buyers, Renton says he expects other fintechs to step in, and possibly even mid-size community banks snap up some alternative providers. If you can buy something for “a song” it’s compelling, he says. “I expect to see a few more offers that are too good to refuse,” he says.
CHANGING BUSINESS MODELS
Pizzileo, the CPA, predicts there will be ongoing opportunities in the year ahead for well-positioned, strong businesses with available capital. In some cases, however, this may require tinkering with their existing ways of doing business.
Before the crisis, some lenders applied the same or very similar lending model across industries. “That is going the way of the dinosaur. That’s not going to be a successful model going forward,” Renton says. Lenders will focus more on having a differentiated model for the businesses they serve. “I think the crisis created this necessity to treat each industry on its own merits and create a model that has some level of independence, he says.
The year ahead is also likely to be one in which e-commerce lending continues to thrive. According to the third quarter 2020 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. retail e-commerce stood at $209.5 billion, up 36.7% year over-year. E-commerce accounted for 14.3% of total retail sales in Q3. Because it’s such a high-growth area, and many businesses that didn’t have this vertical before are moving in this direction and more lenders are focusing on it and growing that part of their business, says Kazimirsky of Become.
It will also be interesting to watch how lenders and funders continue to reshape themselves. Sofi, for instance, is continuing to pursue its goal of receiving a national bank charter. Other lenders and funders may also seek to reinvent themselves as they attempt to stay afloat and compete more effectively.
“Monoline lenders that rely on a single product will have more difficulty supporting customers in the wake of Covid,” says Gina Taylor Cotter, senior vice president and general manager of global business financing at American Express, which purchased Kabbage in 2020. “Small businesses need multi-product solutions to not only access working capital, but also real-time insights to help them be more prudent with their cash flow and accept contactless payments safely to encourage more business,” she says.
CHANGES IN RISK MODELING
Another pandemic-driven change is that lenders have had to tweak their risk modeling. Everyone understands the economy is not in the greatest spot, but their challenge in 2021 will be developing a way to assess future losses in the absence of a baseline, says Rutger van Faassen, head of product and market strategy for the benchmarking and omnichannel research group at Informa Financial Intelligence.
Consumer behaviors have changed, for instance. So even though the pandemic will end, it’s too soon to say what the structural impacts on an industry will be and how that affects the desirability of lending to especially hard-hit businesses, such as restaurants, cruise lines and fitness centers. “Clearly the behavior that everyone is showing right now is because of the pandemic. The question is: how will people behave once the pandemic ends,” he says.
“In the meantime, a lot of lenders will have to do more in-the-moment decision-making, until we get to a point when we’re truly in a new normal, when they can start recalibrating models for the longer-term,” he says.
OPPORTUNITIES TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES
One certainty in the year ahead is the need to help existing small businesses with their recovery, says Cotter of American Express. “Small businesses represent 99 percent of all jobs, two-thirds of new jobs and half of the non-farm GDP in America. Our country’s success depends on small businesses, and financial institutions have a great opportunity to meet their needs to recover and return to positions of growth in 2021,” she says.
How to make this happen is something many alternative financers will grapple with in 2021. Another opportunity may exist in providing funding solutions to new businesses or those that have pivoted as a result of the pandemic. Cotter points to the inaugural American Express Entrepreneurial Spirit Trendex, which found 76% of businesses have already pivoted their business this year and 73% expect to do it again next year. “New-business applications have reached record heights as entrepreneurs pivot and adapt, indicating a surge of new ventures that will require financial solutions to build their business,” Cotter says.
REGULATORY WATCH
Several regulatory issues hang in the balance in 2021, including state-based disclosure laws, expected rules on third-party data aggregation and demographic data collection, and the status of a special purpose charter for fintechs, says Ryan Metcalf, head of U.S. public policy, regulatory affairs and social impact at Funding Circle. With a new administration coming in, the regulatory environment could become more favorable for measures that stalled during Trump’s tenure.
Armen Meyer, vice president of LendingClub and an active member of the Marketplace Lending Association, says he’s hoping to see a bill pass in 2021 that requires more transparency for small business lending. He would also like to see more states follow the lead of California and Virginia and make the 36% interest rate standard of Congress’s Military Lending Act, which covers active- duty service members (including those on active Guard or active Reserve duty) and covered dependents, the law of the land. “We’re calling for this to be expanded to everybody,” he says.
CANADA
Meanwhile, our neighbors to the North have their own challenges and opportunities for the year ahead. The alternative financing industry in Canada originated out of the 2008 recession when banks restricted their credit box and wouldn’t lend to certain groups. While conditions are very different now, “this period of economic uncertainty is going to be an incredible fertile period of time for fintechs to come up with new and interesting and creative credit products just like they did entering the last financial crisis,” says Tal Schwartz, head of policy at the Canadian Lenders Association.
Open banking continues to be on the Canadian docket for 2021 and how the framework shapes up is of utmost interest to fintech lenders in Canada. Schwartz says he’s also hopeful that alternative players in Canada will have a role to play in subsequent government- initiated lending programs. He’s also expecting to see more growth in the e-commerce area, particularly when it comes to extending credit to e-commerce companies and in financing solutions at checkout for online shopping.
Love of Sales Turned Shy Student into LA Real-Estate YouTube Powerhouse
December 18, 2020
“When the Pandemic first started, a lot of the classes we worked with just canceled, everything went downhill,” Loida Velasquez, an LA-based real estate broker, said. “But starting in June until now— everything turned around. Inventory is so low, and there are so many buyers, most houses are selling in 24 hours. I’ve never seen a market like this before.”
It’s a seller’s market like you can’t believe right now, said Velasquez, and that’s what she specializes in: running a cold-calling, door-knocking real estate firm that jumps on expired listings, revamps properties, and sells them on the open market.
After five years of rapid success, Velasquez has taken her charisma to social media, creating a series of Youtube videos to help other brokers find the success she has in the real estate world.
“When I started my real estate career, I remember trying to find videos of people sharing their experience, but most of them were men: I didn’t find many women,” Velasquez said. “So I told myself, ‘you know what, I’m going to start creating videos to put out my journey so people can see what it’s like not only as a real estate agent but as a younger woman in this business.’ And that’s how my channel started.”
Velasquez has also begun teaching online courses for brokers who need help developing their skills. She offers an all-encompassing approach, including cold calling and knocking on doors, that she said many modern brokers don’t use anymore, even though they never became any less viable.
“I knew that the old school approach of cold calling and door knocking was something that a lot of agents don’t like to do,” she said. “So if I became very good at it, I knew that I was going to become successful a little faster than someone who doesn’t incorporate that type of prospecting.”
It has set her apart, and part of why she launched online classes: her videos on real estate were so successful other agencies were telling their trainees to watch her work. Many agencies don’t offer adequate training, Velasquez said, some give out unethical advice. When newly licensed brokers find Velasquez, she said she stands out as an agent with standards and knowledge of the industry.
That knowledge comes in the form of hard-earned experience, one that includes making slip-ups along the way, something she said ocassionally still happens. It’s all part of the game, she explains. Many of her leads come in from her online networking now, but her techniques are still honed to reach out to sellers looking for a knowledgeable agent who knows the market.
“A lot of my business comes from social media, whether it’s from agents that watch me and send me referrals, or just consumers that are trying to learn what it takes to buy or sell a house,” Velasquez said. “But aside from that, I still cold call a lot of ‘for sale by owners’ and expired. Many of them still want to sell, but they had to pull their home off the market. Many of them didn’t have a good relationship with the last agent and want to find someone else who can do a better job.”
And that relationship comes in the form of Velasquez calling out of the blue, flipping the house successfully in a matter of weeks, sometimes two or three sales every month.
Things were not this easy for what outwardly looks like a charismatic, polished agent; Velasquez attests that she was quiet and anxious even to present a school project before she found her love of sales.
“I was the shyest person ever, and I was terrified of talking in group projects,” Velasquez said. “If people from my past saw me, they would never guess I would be doing public speaking events and would have never known this is what I would become.”
Velasquez was a sociology major before getting a side job as a brand ambassador, traveling to conventions and selling face to face to customers. Everything changed.
“Telling people about the product, getting paid to talk to people, helped me get myself out of my shell and comfort zone,” She said. “I don’t know why I was scared of talking to strangers, but it helped me get out there, and I switched my major to marketing.”
After she went back to get an MBA in 2015, she started making Youtube videos and found her passion. She said that with determination, anyone could get over hurdles and find success. Selling real estate is not what it looks like on TV, but Velasquez noted the hard work is worth it for the payoff.
“After the turning point, I started to see people responding ‘because of this video, I got my first listing.’ I said, if I need to get myself out of my comfort zone to help people, this is something I know I need to do,” Velasquez said. “If you stay focused and surround yourself with the right people, you’ll make it. There will be many times you will doubt yourself, and it is not like what you see on TV.”
