Talk:LendingPoint

Closely connected editors

Looking at the history of this article it appears that the handful of editors who contributed over 90% of the content in the article were editors who exclusively edited LendingPoint (and nothing else). I was also able to quickly deduce the name and "communications consultant" occupation of one early editor, and now another "public relations strategist" (who at least has self-identified as having a conflict of interest). Wikipedia strives to maintain this reference source as an encyclopedia that neutrally documents the preserved record of information about various subjects. That integrity begins to collapse when some editors are paid to build a "message" about a client's subject matter. It's possible that this article could be rescued, but it should be the work of meticulously looking for reliable-source content in third-party publications, and building from that. - AppleBsTime (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposed content modifications by User:Tcogginpr

History

LendingPoint was founded in 2014 by Tom Burnside, Franck Fatras, Victor J. Pacheco, and Juan E. Tavares. The founders saw that the aftermath of the Great Recession was a polarizing force in consumer lending, as consumers were divided into either "prime" or "subprime" asset classes as defined by their FICO scores. Banks continued to compete for prime customers by offering low interest rates and loyalty programs, but consumers below the 700 FICO dividing line were grouped together and remained stuck between bank declines and very few responsible borrowing choices. The founders recognized financial behaviors and characteristics that were more distinctive than FICO scores, which defined an asset class that could be seen as an emerging market with predictive behaviors and risk profiles. LendingPoint was created with the goal of providing access to more affordable loans for these consumers with credit scores between 580–700, a class which LendingPoint names "NearPrime".

LendingPoint officially launched its first consumer loan product[1] in January 2015. In October 2015, LendingPoint announced a $100 million credit facility with funds managed by the Tradable Credit and Direct Lending groups of Ares Management.[2] Just two months later, LendingPoint signed an additional credit facility for $5 million of incremental financing with Aeterna Capital Partners.[3] This money was raised to help the company expand its loan portfolio to even more consumers and grow with the demands of the market as it continued rollout across the U.S.

In August 2016, former American Express executive Houman Motaharian joined LendingPoint as Chief Revenue Officer.[4] By the end of 2016, within two years of its public launch, LendingPoint had funded more than $100 million in consumer loans across 13 states.[5]

LendingPoint signed an exclusive partnership with ezVerify in June 2017[6] to provide a new service called ezCarePoint, which allows patients to predict their out-of-pocket expenses and apply for flexible payment plans and loans to cover the costs of medical procedures.

On August 22, 2017, LendingPoint closed an up to $500 million credit facility arranged by Guggenheim Securities.[7] The company took down $138.5 million of the facility at the closing and on September 15, 2017, it took down an additional $32.7 million. This was one of the largest credit facilities raised in 2017 in the online consumer lending industry for a balance sheet lender, and it provided LendingPoint with additional capital to expand its products and services nationwide, at a significantly lower cost of funds.[8] Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets division of Guggenheim Partners, arranged the transaction and served as bookrunner. CBIZ MHM is the Administrative Agent, and U.S. Bank is the Note Agent and Paying Agent.

On January 11, 2018, the company announced that it acquired the merchant portal technology and other assets of LoanHero, a fintech platform for point of sale finance. LoanHero's retail financing technology allows merchants to close more transactions while providing consumers more payment options.[9] LendingPoint noted that the LoanHero assets would help accelerate the company's expansion into point-of-need and point-of-sale financing, by combining LoanHero's merchant onboarding and reporting tools and installed merchant base with LendingPoint's credit underwriting and risk management expertise.[10] Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In February 2018, LendingPoint announced that Citibank veteran Tony Martino joined the company as CFO.[11]

On May 17, 2018, LendingPoint announced that it had closed another credit facility—this one up to $600 million—also arranged by Guggenheim Securities. This second credit facility brought LendingPoint's total Senior Credit availability to $1.1 billion raised in nine months.[12] The financing will continue to fuel LendingPoint's growth and ability to serve more customers.

On June 28, 2018, LendingPoint upsized its mezzanine financing, bringing the total of its mezzanine credit facility to $52.5 million. The upsized mezzanine allows LendingPoint to more efficiently manage its equity by warehouse financing its originations before selling them into its Senior Credit Facilities.[13]

On February 4, 2019, LendingPoint again increased its mezzanine financing, bringing the total of the facility to $67.5 million. A Paragon co-investor joined the facility as a lender.[14] The credit facility provides advance rate enhancements for more efficient equity usage while also providing swingline support.

In August 2019, LendingPoint placed 17th on Inc. 5000’s List of Fastest Growing Private Companies in the US in 2019.[15] The company hit successive funding records year-over-year and saw its consumer lending business achieve more than 9200% growth in three years, with more originations in 2018 than in 2015, 2016 and 2017 combined. LendingPoint also ranked 2nd in financial services.

On August 26, 2019, LendingPoint announced that it closed a committed, $250 million credit facility arranged by Guggenheim Securities. The credit facility has an accordion feature, which allows the company to increase the size of the credit facility to up to $500 million. On the closing date, the company drew down $215 million of notes from the credit facility.[16]

On September 4, 2019, LendingPoint announced that it closed its inaugural securitization of consumer loans. LendingPoint Receivables Trust 2019-1 ("LDPT 2019-1") issued $177.85 million of notes backed by a pool of $187.22 million of direct-to-consumer loans originated on the LendingPoint platform. Guggenheim Securities acted as the sole structuring advisor and sole book-running manager. All collateral contributed to the transaction had been held on LendingPoint’s balance sheet and, as the sponsor of the transaction, LendingPoint served as the risk retention sponsor. [17]

LendingPoint was recognized as the fastest growing company in the financial services category and 7th overall fastest-growing private company as part of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter awards.[18]

In 2019 LendingPoint also landed on Atlanta Inno’s inaugural 50 On Fire[19], ranked third on the ACG Georgia Fast 40[20], and was a finalist for the Deloitte 2019 Technology Fast 500[21].

To-date, the company has loaned more than $2 billion to consumers and self-employed entrepreneurs, partnered with more than 3,000 small business to help them grow their businesses by connecting them with ready-to-purchase customers, and integrated with e-commerce giant eBay to help their sellers grow their online stores with financing options.[22]

Products

LendingPoint built a proprietary credit risk model which allows it to offer more loans to consumers with FICO scores between 580–700. Using hundreds of data points, LendingPoint looks at a person's complete financial picture, taking into consideration credit history, employment history, earning potential and other data to determine creditworthiness.[23]

Installment loans can be used for a number of purposes including home and car repair, renovations, weddings, medical or veterinary bills, travel, or debt consolidation.[24]

In partnership with ezVerify, LendingPoint provides patients and medical providers a service called ezCarePoint, which aims to make it easier and more affordable for consumers to pay their medical bills. ezCarePoint helps patients verify their insurance coverage and payment responsibility for health care services before the procedures take place, preventing incidents where patients unexpectedly find themselves responsible for bills outside of their insurance coverage. If the patient can't pay the out-of-pocket costs up front, they can apply for a loan and payment plan quickly and easily from the ezCarePoint platform. Patients are notified of approvals in a matter of seconds, and upon approval, LendingPoint pays the loan proceeds to medical practitioners within one business day to pay the patients' out-of-pocket medical costs up front.[25]

The LendingPoint Merchant Solutions platform provides merchants a fully integrated, one-stop retail financing product to convert more customers at the point of sale. LendingPoint Merchant Solutions combines the merchant onboarding and reporting tools acquired in January 2018 from LoanHero,[26] with LendingPoint's credit underwriting and risk management expertise.

On 16 July 2020, LendingPoint introduced a first-of-its-kind Lending Operating System (LOS), called SDKn™, which provides an online consumer loan pre-approval portal for companies of all sizes providing inexpensive borrowing solutions to their consumers' broadest loan spectrum.[27][28]

Comments

What the heck is happening here? Talk pages are to talk about the Article page, not to be a surrogate of the article. - AppleBsTime (talk) 21:37, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Recommend providing rationale for each change or modification being requested. And it will be important to show actual sources, not "[26]". - AppleBsTime (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Advert & Lead Too Short Tags

Proposed removing these tags, as I removed all promotional language, omitted Products section (deemed too self-serving for a company of this nature), and reconfigured content from History/Products headers into the lead. Still need to tackle Orphan tag. Did the closely connected editors get outted? @AppleBsTime: Message text. Ancient library (talk) 17:28, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ancient library: I would feel more comfortable if all the content that is referenced to "businesswire.com" is removed. A website that hosts press releases doesn't meet the standard of independent journalism. I don't really understand your question about the editors being "outted". They can be easily identified with a little research, but their names were not disclosed here on Wikipedia, per WP:OUT. - AppleBsTime (talk) 21:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)