LendingFront, a leading small business lending software provider, today announced it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by Information Venture Partners with participation from Newark Venture Partners, Revel Partners, Contour Venture Partners and existing investors Struck Capital, ValueStream Ventures and Las Olas VC.
The funding will be used to help deliver LendingFront’s end-to-end white label software platform to more banks and financial institutions, giving them access to the most sophisticated technology in the market for originating, underwriting and servicing small business credit – a $600b+ market, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
“Traditional financial institutions need new tools to serve the evolving needs and expectations of small business owners,” said Jorge Sun, Co-Founder and CEO of LendingFront. “LendingFront allows banks to compete with technology-based lenders and keep up with the changing regulatory environment.”
Co-founders Jorge Sun (CEO) and Dario Vergara (CTO) are pioneers in this field, having met while on the founding management team of OnDeck (NYSE: ONDK), with Sun serving as the company’s first Chief Credit Officer and Vergara as the first head of technology. They have led teams that developed and implemented modern credit and technology infrastructure at a number of leading financial institutions. Together, they founded LendingFront with a vision to deliver this kind of next-generation technology to the wider range of credit providers that serve the majority of small business borrowers.
"We know first hand that legacy lending technology can be cumbersome and inflexible, and often fails to meet the needs of the current market," said Dave Unsworth, Co-Founder and General Partner of Information Venture Partners. "There is a significant demand for cloud-based SMB lending products – and LendingFront offers incumbents tools that allow them to improve functionality, accessibility and simplicity.”
Funding from the Series A financing will be used to expand their team hiring for sales, marketing and engineering roles.