Most often, the small business owners that come to IOU Financial for a loan have already been painfully exposed to the fact that banks are much less likely to lend to them. These owners come seeking alternative lending options out of necessity, but also end up finding out that the process of working with IOU Financial is so much easier and faster. What they don’t know is that behind the scenes, it is our technology platform and APIs (application programming interfaces) that make our paperless application and approval process possible.
While traditional banks typically touch an application several times as the loan moves from data entry to processing and eventually to underwriting, we use technology that streamlines the entire process, relying on data we gather automatically through the third-party APIs instead of manual steps. For the borrower, this means less paperwork, fewer pieces of documentation to physically provide, and a quicker, more efficient loan application process. Today, we have developed connections to nearly a dozen APIs including Equifax and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as well as eBay and several social media sites. The latter allows us to also consider non-traditional loan criteria, such as Yelp! ratings, in the decision making process.
IOU Financial is raising the bar for technology in the lending space, which is why we can process and approve loans in a matter of days, compared to the weeks or months that are most often the case for traditional lenders. And, as we continue to add more API connections, we will be able to automatically gather data from even more data sources. Our expectation is that in the future, these and other technology advances will allow us to go from application to funding in just minutes or hours.