Rob Pfeifer has been appointed to chief risk officer at Affirm; was previously chief financial officer; Pfeifer has been with Affirm since March 2013; prior to Affirm, Pfeifer worked in various financial analysis roles; he has extensive experience in forecasting, reporting and deal transactions.
The deal would add to market competition for retail credit, specifically competing directly with Wal-Mart credit cards; Wal-Mart plans to begin a pilot program with Affirm that would offer installment loan plans in select locations and for a targeted group of online customers; source reports that the installment loans will focus on costlier items of $200 or more; with an Affirm partnership, Wal-Mart could seek to reach an expanded market demographic, specifically customers with limited credit histories; Affirm uses alternative underwriting methods and its loans average approximately $750 with repayment periods of three to 24 months and fixed annual percentage rates ranging from 10% to 30%. Source
Article shares a story of a $200 jean purchase that was made with the help of point of sale finance firm Affirm; Affirm works with over 1,000 retailers to provide installment loans; merchants benefit since consumers end up spending more, but some critics say it promotes poor consumer behavior; article shares the history of consumer credit and the changes in point of sale financing. Source
Affirm has raised $200 million in its latest round led by GIC, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund; the valuation of the company is between $1.5 and $2 billion according to sources, which is about double the valuation of the company last year; Khosla Ventures and Spark Capital also participated in the round. Source
While on the surface Affirm’s business may appear to be focused on lending and payments, the company can also help merchants in marketing; the company has large amounts of data on who is buying products, what they are buying and where they are buying; with this information they plan to offer their merchants more services in the future; Tearsheet shares more on Affirm’s plans. Source
US online lender Affirm has announced its 1 millionth consumer installment loan; the platform works with Cross River Bank for loan originations and partners with retailers to offer its credit financing solution; the firm is managed by Pay Pal co-founder Max Levchin and has also announced it will be moving its San Francisco headquarters to 650 California Street with 86,225 square feet of office space for the growing company. Source
Consumer lending Platform Affirm is looking to move beyond lending and into the financial advice space; currently Affirm works with retails to offer consumers a credit option when making a purchase; they are exploring ways to help customers better understand their debt and offer a way to help them reduce interest payments; Affirm has lent over $1bn to date Source.
According to Bloomberg, the company is in advanced talks for the latest round; the valuation would be about double of Affirm’s last round in April 2016; Affirm works with over 1,000 retailers and also recently rolled out a mobile app which includes a virtual credit card; the point of sale loans have annual percentage rates between 10-30%. Source
This week’s PeerIQ Weekly Industry Update covers the Fed raising rates by 25 bps, Affirm’s big fundraising and securitization news; PNC announced their new lending pro cuts through their mobile wallet and anticipate it will outperform branch loans; Equifax completed their first Securitization, a $200mn deal backed by lender fee revenues; PeerIQ does a deep analysis on the Sharpe Ratio which helps to gauge risk-adjusted returns. Source.
While speaking on Business Insider’s podcast “Success! How I Did It” Affirm CEO Max Levchin shared the story about how he started PayPal; Levchin moved out to Silicon Valley after starting a business that didn’t succeed and was sleeping on his friend’s floor; he saw Peter Thiel deliver a lecture and stayed after to chat with the then hedge fund manager; they met the next morning for breakfast and Thiel liked one of his two ideas, he decided to invest and that was the company that became PayPal. Source.