AI-powered SMB credit advisor startup Charm Solutions has raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by BootstrapLabs.
Charm says its SMB credit advisor service uses self-learning AI to help institutional lenders transform data into valuable insights to drive profitability and help SMBs make better business decisions.
Many lenders still use manual processes such as emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets to access borrower information, which can take more than a week to collect financial data. Many financial institutions rely upon traditional credit scores to underwrite the SMBs, not leveraging the wealth of business data that is available.
Charm’s AI underwriting models and benchmarking insights, combined with its proprietary SMB Score technology, have been developed over the past 10 years. The platform is currently being used by lending institutions to make decisions for loans faster, reduce processing cycle time, and understand which loans in their portfolio need review during this period of ongoing economic volatility.
The firm recently formed a partnership with Abrigo, a provider of compliance, credit risk, lending and asset/liability management tech, that will make Charm Solutions available to lending institutions via their SageWorks platform.
Nicolai Wadstrom, CEO, BootstrapLabs, says: "They [Charm] bring a wealth of knowledge in machine learning, data science, business & consumer lending and technology, and are in great position to empower small and medium sized business owners to more efficiently operate their businesses, similar to how Credit Karma has helped consumers improve their credit scores and lower their cost of lending."