Lending Briefing: Five questions with Vince Passione, CEO and founder of LendKey
- LendKey founder and CEO Vince Passione talks to Tearsheet about the evolution of the lending-as-a-service model, as well as the current macro lending landscape.
- Alternative lending is getting traction in some global markets, driven by Big Tech increasing its footprint in financial services.
Ten years ago, everyone wanted to build a direct lender, but LendKey took a different approach by going B2B. They wanted to work with lenders like regional banks and credit unions to help them power their own lending business.
LendKey is now a well networked lending platform designed to deliver capital and liquidity management to banks, credit unions and fintechs.
I spoke to the company’s founder and CEO Vince Passione about the evolution of the lending-as-a-service model, as well as the current macro lending landscape.
How did LendKey start in the lending-as-a-service business?
Back in 2009, we saw the need and need was simple – many of the clients that we deal with, especially local community lenders, right community banks, credit unions, didn’t have the technology nor the capability to offer a digital lending solution.
We started in education lending, which was fairly digital as students were applying online. It made sense to enable local community lenders by building a lending as a service platform for them.
Our solution became very popular, so we started moving into other asset classes as well. We built a full turnkey solution, providing the decisioning capability, the origination platform, as well as the servicing system, and also providing the call center and the operations.
What makes a good partnership between a technology provider and a bank?
The first and one that’s probably overlooked is about culture – the first thing you need to do is build a company that’s very focused on building a culture around serving a partner who has to deal with a prudential regulator. That means talking to those regulators and explaining what you’re going to do. In each instance, it wasn’t an easy conversation. Regulators don’t really like change.
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