P2Binvestor (P2Bi), a leading marketplace lending platform that offers crowdsourced, asset-secured lines of credit to growing companies with big ambitions, is catalyzing the growth of mission-aligned business with the launch of a first-of-its kind bank partnership program. The new program provides startups and emerging businesses an innovative way to quickly access capital while allowing banks to increase their addressable market and improve their conversion rates. The program was launched with New Resource Bank, a triple-bottom-line bank serving values-driven businesses and nonprofits that are building a more sustainable world.
“Businesses want access to affordable bank financing and banks want to lend to growing businesses, but the two sides haven’t been able to connect due to regulatory and technology hurdles,” said Krista Morgan, CEO of P2Binvestor. “Until now, there hasn’t been a solution like this, which unfortunately has forced growing companies to take on expensive and time-consuming funding. With this partnership program, we’re changing that. We’re enabling banks to lend to businesses they otherwise wouldn’t be able to due to strict lending standards. We are excited to be powering New Resource Bank’s line of credit with both our marketplace and proprietary receivables lending platform.”
The bank-fintech partnership allows community banks to leverage P2Bi’s receivables lending platform and marketplace to quickly deliver multi-million dollar lines of credit to growing small-to-medium businesses. This will facilitate businesses in building lending relationships with banks at an earlier stage in their lifecycle and provide them with access to a much lower interest rate than they would with a traditional alternative lender. Through the program, banks will provide 50 percent of the capital with a senior secured position and P2Bi’s marketplace of private investors will provide the rest of the capital, which results in a blended interest rate of eight to 12 percent and all the capital they need.
The initial roll-out of the program with New Resource Bank will open up a new vehicle for capital to small companies in an initial stage of growth who might not otherwise have access to the funding needed to initiate operations — an area that many young, mission-aligned companies struggle with. With this new loan product, companies lacking a significant transactional history will now be able to gain access to capital.
“We are pleased to be partnering with P2Bi to create this innovative product — it’s a win-win for us and businesses,” said Vincent Siciliano, president and CEO of New Resource Bank. “By using P2Bi’s platform, growing businesses will be able to secure capital that they typically wouldn’t be able to access through bank lending alone. This allows us to offer a greater suite of lending products to the community of sustainable businesses we serve.”
The new P2Bi bank partnership program is the latest in a series of initiatives striving to connect purpose-driven businesses with the necessary capital to drive social and environmental change. Salesforce Ventures recently announced the launch of a $50 million impact investment fund to accelerate growth of companies work to address challenges across workforce development, equality, sustainability and the social sector; the Calvert Foundation rolled out Capital Aggregation, a new business line dedicated to pooling capital from multiple institutional and accredited investors to enable investment at scale in mission-driven organizations; and B Corporation Thread partnered with nonprofit Kiva to expand its zero-interest micro-loan program for entrepreneurs in its Haitian supply chain.
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Published Oct 11, 2017 5am EDT / 2am PDT / 10am BST / 11am CEST