Liquid FSI to Augment Healthcare Lending Platform with Blockchain Technology
February 11, 2019Liquid FSI announced today that it has entered into an agreement with TVS Next, an IT company, to build a blockchain platform to enhance its healthcare lending capabilities.
“Our Blockchain solution solves a myriad of issues including the privacy of provider [typically medical office], biller, payer, patient and bank data,” said Liquid FSI President and CEO, Frank Capozza. “Blockchain will also support our on-demand payment offering Convert2Pay…and we believe that TVS Next has the depth of resources we need to serve the $3.6 trillion healthcare market.”
The is an improvement of Liquid FSI’s Convert2Pay offering which can provide cash in as little as 24 hours to medical offices with insurance claims.
“Instead of waiting 45 days or 60 days to get paid, [the doctor] can get paid in 24 hours because we’ve done all the analytics, and we’re scored [the medical practice] on a scale from 1 to 10,” Capozza said. “If he’s a solid performer and he’s using our platform to level out his peaks and valleys in cash flow, we see all of that in the system.”
The new use of blockchain, a decentralized system that logs information anonymously into a ledger, should give increased confidence to Liquid FSI’s medical office clients, Capozza said.
Capozza said he has excellent relationships with a number of brokers who send him clients. But as evidence of the privacy problem, he said that he will occasionally get applications from some brokers that include patient names, addresses, and social security numbers. This information isn’t stolen, but can be released by a medical practice if it needs money urgently. Capozza said he would rather see less of this and is confident that the new blockchain technology will significantly reduce any privacy lapses.
“It’s the same product, but it’s improving the privacy for everyone involved,” he said.
He also said that they are in talks with three banks that will be able fund on the Convert2Pay platform and will be comforted by the increased privacy afforded by the blockchain technology to be used by Liquid FSI. Capozza said Liquid FSI has plans to offer credit to doctors and sees itself as a VISA for the healthcare industry.
Aside from working with broker partners, Liquid FSI also works with medical billing companies to obtain clients, like pediatrician or dentist offices. Founded in 2014, the company has made some key recruitments to its overall team over the past year, including the addition of Barry Blecherman, professor of Finance and Risk Engineering at the NYU Tandon School, to its Board of Advisors.
Why RapidAdvance Is Now Rapid Finance
February 7, 2019
RapidAdvance has officially changed its name to Rapid Finance.
“The term ‘advance’ is out of favor these days,” said founder and Chairman of Rapid Finance Jeremy Brown. “It also doesn’t reflect who we are as a company or what our brand is. We put our clients in a variety of different financing solutions including factoring, term loans and equipment leasing. ‘Advance’ is very narrow and old school. ‘Finance’ represents where the company has evolved to and where we’re going.”
The company’s logo is also new, but Brown said that they purposely retained the same color scheme to make the change as seamless as possible.
“Before we had an arrow through the word ‘rapid,’” Brown said. “I think the three squares [in the new logo] represent an arrow head so that there’s continuity with the old logo.”
Consistent with the rationale for the company’s name change, Brown said that their business is about 85% term loans and only 15% merchant cash advance, healthcare cash advance and bridge loans. Through partners, Rapid Finance also provides their customers with access to SBA loans, factoring, asset based loans, commercial real estate and lines of credit. By the second quarter of this year, Brown expects that they will offer their own line of credit product.
Rapid Finance is broadly diversified by business type, according to Brown. He said that no business category accounts for more than 25% of their business. As for acquiring new business, Brown said that 60% comes from partners/brokers and 40% comes from their internal direct marketing efforts.
Brown said that Rapid Finance, which employs about 200 people, has hired about 25 over the last six months. Most of the hires were in the technology and sales departments, both internal sales and sales reps who work with ISO partners. He also said they expect to fund between $550 and $600 million this year.
Founded in 2005, the company’s employees are divided between its headquarters in Bethesda, MD and another office in Detroit, MI, which houses Rapid Finance’s direct sales and marketing teams.
New Jersey MCA & Business Loan Disclosure Bill Update (S2262)
February 6, 2019
Bill S2262 in the New Jersey State Senate mandating disclosures on MCA and business loan contracts, was amended last week. In its current form, the bill, if it became law, would require MCA providers to disclose:
- the total dollar costs to be charged to a small business concern, assuming the small business concern delivers all purchased receivables to providers at the time they are generated or at a mutually agreed upon time, and all required fees and charges that are paid by the small business concern and that cannot be avoided by the small business concern;
- the amount financed, which shall mean the advance amount less any prepaid finance charges; and
- for a cash advance that calculates repayment costs dependent on the small business concern’s future receivables, the estimated annual percentage rate, provided as a range, with at least three different repayment times provided and a narrative explanation of how each rate was derived. Any estimated annual percentage rate is to be calculated using a projected sales volume that is based on the small business concern’s average historical sales or the sales projections relied on by the provider in underwriting the cash advance; or
- for a cash advance that calculates repayment costs as a fixed payment, the annual percentage rate, expressed as a nominal yearly rate, inclusive of any fees and finance charges.
Brokers would also be required to provide uniform fee disclosures to both the small business owner and lender or MCA funding provider in a document separate from the funding contract before a small business consummates a loan or MCA transaction.
Previously, the bill defined merchant cash advances as loans. The latest draft updated the definition to mean a financing option that allows a small business concern to sell all or a portion of its future sales collections or other future revenues in exchange for an immediate payment. It refers to this as an asset-based transaction.
You can follow the bill’s updates and read the latest drafts here.
S2262 was originally introduced 11 months ago in March 2018.
SBA Processes Significant Loan Volume in Days After the Shutdown
February 4, 2019
After the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history, which shuttered the Small Business Administration (SBA) for more than a month, SBA employees went back to work on Monday, January 28. At the end of the day on January 29, the SBA had processed 1,100 SBA 7(a) loans worth $500 million, according to Bailey Wolff, Public Affairs Specialist for the SBA’s New York District Office. For context, in all of 2018, the SBA processed $25.4 billion in SBA 7(a) loans.
“It’s a great number,” Wolff said. “We’re back up and fully operational.”
SBA loan funders and brokers have feared that the backlog of SBA loan applications created by a month-long closure of the government agency would cause extensive delays. But it seems that the SBA is processing these loans quite quickly.
“There is a backlog, but applications seem to be moving smoothly,” said Everett Sands, CEO of Lendistry which funds a sizable amount of SBA loans.
Sands now has seven SBA loan applications waiting to get funded. So far, since the SBA re-opened on January 28, none of his applications have been funded yet. (Normally, it takes 1-2 days for his SBA loans to be approved). But Sands said that last week was essentially catch-up week for the agency. If the volume of loans processed from January 28 through January 29 continues at this pace, delays will be minimal.
“We should be back on track this week,” Sands said.
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 AltFinanceDaily 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.
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.
Meet CAN Capital’s New CEO
January 8, 2019
CAN Capital announced this morning the appointment of Edward J. Siciliano as its new CEO.
“There is still a huge delta between the need for capital for small businesses and the capital that banks are willing to provide,” Siciliano said. “And this creates an enormous opportunity for CAN to expand its business.”
Siciliano comes to CAN Capital from the equipment finance and small business lending company Marlin Business Services, based in New Jersey. He worked there for a decade in several roles including Chief Operating Officer and Chief Sales Officer.
“Ed is a proven leader with deep industry knowledge and a strategist who is skilled at driving business growth,” said CAN Capital’s founder and Executive Chairman Gary Johnson. “Throughout his career, he has served the needs of small businesses while building loyal teams that deliver innovative products and a great customer experience.”
Siciliano is relocating from Princeton, NJ to live near CAN Capital’s headquarters in Kennesaw, GA, near Atlanta. In September 2018, the company announced that it would be moving its finance and executive functions to Kennesaw from New York City. A CAN Capital spokesperson at the time said that Parris Sanz, the former CEO, did not want to move to the Atlanta area for personal reasons. Now, Siciliano said that there is no longer a New York City office, but there is a roughly eight person finance team in White Plains, NY, that will eventually be moved to the Georgia headquarters.
“I really value the work that [Sanz] has done…and we’re going to stay the course out of the gate. However, I’ve been tasked with accelerating the business,” Siciliano said.
In this effort, Siciliano said he will continue to invest in technology, but will also focus on the small business customer rather than a specific product. Instead, Siciliano said that he would like to see CAN Capital expand its product offerings to serve more needs of small business customers.
He also said that he would like to expand the company’s referral partners beyond brokers to include other players such as manufacturers, attorneys and accountants.
For Siciliano, there are two key elements to focus on for any funding company. The first is credit, or underwriting.
“CAN is one of the very few fintechs that lived through 2008, the recession. You get information about your credit portfolio and your credit model in stressful times like that, that is invaluable…I feel like we have great credit models, which will constantly be enhanced and will always be a focus. Your credit model is the Achilles heel of any lending company.”
The other element that Siciliano focuses on is lowering customer acquisition costs. He said he wants to broaden product offerings to attract different and more partners who will, in turn, bring their small business customers to CAN Capital.
Currently, Siciliano said that the company originates $25-30 million a month and 95% of the business is providing working capital and business loans while the remaining 5% is merchant cash advance. CAN Capital works with brokers but also has an internal sales team. There are about 100 employees at the Kennesaw headquarters, including the company’s executive, marketing, and analytics teams. There is also a technology team of about 20 people located in Costa Rica and Siciliano said that the company works with business development people who work independently throughout the country.
Founded in 1998, CAN Capital has provided more than $7 billion to more than 81,000 small businesses.
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 AltFinanceDaily 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.
