Lendified, a Toronto-based FinTech, announced today that it has closed a $15 million CAD Series A funding round, in order to continue its growth within Canada.
The round was co-led by WD Capital Markets and INFOR Financial, and saw funding from CI Financial Corp., Windsor Private Capital, FirePower Capital, and a group of investors including Glenn Murphy, founder of FIS Holdings and former CEO of Gap Inc. and Shoppers Drug Mart.
“Digital lending by the SME sector in Canada [is] a segment we believe offers more than $5 billion in lending opportunities.”
Launched in 2015 Lendified provides short-term loans to small businesses in Canada. It also offers tools for managing cash flow, as well as advanced credit adjudication software to financial service providers across North America. The company offers business loans up to $150,000 for terms up to two years. It touts itself as a “fast and affordable” way for businesses to get quotes instantly and loans within 48 hours.
Since its launch, Lendified has received more than $600,000,000 in loan requests and experienced exceptional growth and portfolio performance, according to the company.
The startup’s underwriting process is also powered by its in-house SaaS platform, JUDI. Lendified called JUDI a “state-of-the-art” credit adjudication platform that allows users to quickly and accurately assess, price, and monitor credit risk, as well as help those users “provide the best possible services to customers”. JUDI was created by Lendified’s technology division and is powered by AI. Besides offering loans, Lendified also offers its SaaS platform to credit unions, community banks, and other financial services companies.
Lendified stated that it plans to use the funding to help it become “a leading small business lender and SaaS company.”
“With this additional capital, we will continue building our lending activity within a marketplace experiencing significant adoption of digital lending by the SME sector in Canada, a segment we believe offers more than $5 billion in lending opportunities”, said Kevin Clark, president and co-founder of Lendified.
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Lendified’s CEO and co-founder, Troy Wright, also noted that he sees “tremendous opportunity” with the company’s SaaS platform business, “as financial institutions push to find best-in-class AI-enabled lending solutions.”
The Toronto FinTech has previously raised $8 million in seed and follow-on funding, bringing its total funding to date $23 million. The company has also previously raised $80 million in senior debt funding for its lending business, to finance working capital loans underwritten by Lendified.
In November, Lendified competed at FinTech Startup Pitch Contest, which took place during the 2018 Canada FinTech Forum in Montréal. While it didn’t win the top prizes, the company ended up receiving a surprise offer of investment of $150,000 each from Luge Capital and BDC Capital, through its Women in Technology Fund.
In late 2015, Lendified joined the MaRS FinTech cluster, and months later acquired Vancouver-based Mentio Technologies, a Techstars alum, specializing in automated cash flow forecasting.
Feature image courtesy Lendified