The marketplace lender has extended the maturity of its credit facility with Deutsche Bank to March 2019; the revised terms also add an additional $52 million to the credit facility; in comments regarding the revised terms, Howard Katzenberg, chief financial officer of OnDeck said, "The closing of this transaction reflects a continued ability to execute our financing strategy for 2017, which includes extending debt maturities and creating additional funding capacity for future loan growth." Source
Harvard Business School has released a comprehensive report on the state of small business lending and its current landscape; Lend Academy provides more details in their article with insight from author, Brayden McCarthy of Fundera; paper includes details on the evolution of online lending within the small business lending market; goals of the paper include laying a foundation for regulatory reform and exploring how online small business lenders can partner with banks. Source
DealStruck, an online lender for small and medium-sized businesses, has stopped originating loans; the industry environment and slowdown in investor capital has affected the company; the firm's CEO Ethan Senturia said, "Although we are not currently originating new loans, we are continuing to provide our clients with the high-level of service they have come to expect from us."; he also noted, "we’ll be looking for strategic options to allow us to continue delivering on our mission to provide unique, appropriate and affordable financing to small businesses nationwide." Source
The Coalition for Responsible Business Finance (CRBF) has announced it will join the Innovative Lending Platform Association (ILPA) in efforts to more broadly support lending for small businesses; the ILPA's network is primarily led by existing members, OnDeck, Kabbage and CAN Capital; with the merger of the two organizations, the ILPA will gain representation from the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Small Business Association, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity; the expanded ILPA will provide even greater resources for advancing online small business lending education, advocacy and best practices; the ILPA is most well known for its work on introducing the SMART Box™ comparison tool for small business lenders; with the merger of the two organizations, the ILPA has also developed an updated industry code of ethics, leveraging the work previously done by the CRBF. Source
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has released data for its February Small Business Optimism Index; the Index shows a decrease to 105.3 from 105.9; the NFIB says that the reading is still one of the highest in 43 years; the lower report for February is primarily due to uncertainty around President Trump's deregulation plans, new healthcare law and tax reform. Source
The Association of Alternative Business Finance is rumored to be the alternative lending sector's next representative association; the consortium has reportedly been developed by seven balance sheet lenders to represent the interests of their lending group; the association will seek to employ and enhance transparency, responsibility, fairness and security; its criteria for inclusion is primarily focused on business product lending. Source
Nucleus Commercial Finance has lent over 500 million British pounds ($624 million) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and is planning to ramp up lending in 2017; firm's lending products include asset finance, construction finance, invoice finance and cash flow finance and they are planning to add new products as well as hire three new people for its asset-based lending team; the platform's lending has increased 100% since April 2016 and it is targeting 1 billion British pounds ($1.25 billion) in loans to SMEs in the next 12 months. Source
LendGenius is launching a new product to offer loan options for small businesses and to help increase education and awareness of small business credit availability; the company plans to launch its service in April 2017; the service will feature a dashboard of available loan offerings for companies based on their application profile; LendGenius has also worked extensively on building out the lender integration with the system which provides a range of API integrations and a comprehensive dashboard for reviewing borrowers; in the past four months the company reports over 30,000 requests for capital totaling over $8 million. Source
Androscoggin Bank launched a new online lending platform for small businesses in January to better compete with the market's options for online small business loans; the firm's Fast Response Business Loans Platform was built in partnership with an undisclosed fintech firm and has processed half a dozen loan applications since its launch; its lending criteria is based on credit score, number of years in business and being based in Maine; its interest rates start at 6% and it currently offers credit lines of up to $10,000 and term loans of up to $100,000. Source
UK invoice financing platform MarketInvoice reported a record day of transactions this week; the platform transacted GBP4.1 million ($5.38 million) in invoice advances to UK businesses; the firm's MarketInvoice Pro product has been a factor supporting increased lending volumes on the platform with the new product offering an open funding line for businesses. Source