Leading online lender
Prospa has announced it has reached $200 million in loan originations adding another achievement to a recent string of success.
As well as
being listed 31 out of 50 in 2016 Fintech100 by H2 Ventures and KPMG, Prospa has also secured an additional $50 million from a large local institutional funder – taking its total capital raised to more than $100 million.
“This is a significant milestone for our business. It means we can meet increasing demand from small businesses for fast, easy access to finance. And it means we can continue to quickly scale,” said
Beau Bertoli, joint CEO of Prospa.
While the firm didn’t publicly disclose how many loans were processed through brokers, Bertoli told
Australian Broker that 80% of the total volume came through the firm’s channel partners.
“Here at Prospa, we’re very, very focused on how we add value to the channel partners’ businesses. In the case of finance brokers, there are a lot of things that we can do to add value to their businesses.”
This includes focusing on education and bringing awareness to the broker community around lending products for small businesses. Prospa had also built a lot of high value add technology pools for brokers to make aspects such as loan applications and marketing a lot easier, Bertoli said.
This dual approach to educating brokers is crucial, he added, especially when it comes to successfully dealing with small business owners.
“Small business owners in particular are very time poor and they don’t want to fill out manual application forms and submit reams and reams of data and paper. They want to have a digital experience. They want to apply online in their own time.”
As a result, Prospa has been working with its channel partners to make the digital process easier for everyone as well.
“It’s been a journey for us of education and awareness and helping the finance broker market understand the trends and changes that are driving the behaviour with Australian small business owners.”
As well as assisting brokers through national aggregators such as
AFG and
Connective, Prospa has a national sales team with a presence in every state.
“For us, it’s building on the foundation we’ve established over the last couple of years and looking at things like product development for our partners, looking at ways to help them enhance their communication style with their customers, and continuing to improve and create a better experience for all of our partners.”
This taps into diversification – one of the key themes of Prospa, Bertoli said.
“In many regards, it’s almost diversify or die in some cases. There are certainly driving changes happening in Australian consumer land and Australian small business land where choice is becoming a lot easier.”
Since it is a lot simpler for consumers to check out different loan products today, moving into small business lending was not enough, he stressed, adding that diversifying into the latest technology solutions was equally important.
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