Lendified, which provides loans specifically for small businesses, has announced that Liquid Capital will provide the senior debt for a new credit facility up to $20 million, meant to go towards working capital loans underwritten by Lendified.
At the same time, Lendified announced the close of a further $4 million in mezzanine financing through a private placement, bringing its total funding to $24 million.
“Most of the funding will be used to provide loans to underserved small businesses in Canada and will also support investment to further develop of our proprietary data and analytics small business risk adjudication platform,” said Troy Wright, co-founder and CEO of Lendified.
Lendified provides small businesses with working capital between $5,000 to $150,000, for terms of up to two years. In March, the company acquired Techstars Seattle graduate Mentio Technologies to add more data and analytics capabilities for the Lendified platform.
Lendified’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Lendified Technologies Inc., also provides third party financial services firms including banks and credit unions dealing with small businesses with a SaaS tool that enhances the risk review process of small businesses. Lendified applys multi-source data analytics with advanced algorithms to provide an overarching view of the current and future performance of small businesses.
“One out of five small businesses have their loan requests declined by banks, and a further 50 percent of small businesses have to use their personal credit cards to fund their businesses,” said Wright. “At Lendified, we evaluate the business, not just the businesses owner, and our evaluation is very streamlined and easy to complete, allowing us to give immediate loan approvals rather than the up to eight weeks it can take a bank to respond.”
