In any transaction between two parties, both sides have to be on the same page about the rules of engagement, whether those rules are about how the game is played, or what the score might be.
Independent appraisals are a standard part of the home-buying process. And in sports, everyone looks at the same scoreboard to see the score, time remaining, etc.
It seems like common sense that it would be hard for parties to do business if they don’t have a common vocabulary or reference point for what they’re exchanging!
And yet in asset-backed lending, a $5 trillion space globally, it’s often the case that lenders and borrowers lack a shared understanding of how the loan operates, what collateral is actually worth, and even how much of the loan has been disbursed.
Over the last 3 years, our CTO Kevin Suh and engineering team have seen firsthand how designing for reporting automation can unlock capabilities in other parts of debt capital workflows. When we started out, we focused on creating foundational capabilities to help fintech companies like Ramp, Navan (formerly TripActions), and Arc automate their debt capital management with capital providers.
To support borrowers, we built the Digital Credit Agreement (a “SparkNotes” version of debt agreement terms), a proprietary data translation layer, a Calculation Engine for asset-backed debt, and Insights for seeing graphs of data over time.
The trickiest part of building a platform that could support all borrower use cases was developing a data foundation that could flexibly adapt to different collateral types and source systems. As we built and refined these capabilities, we realized that asset managers should be able to access and work off of the same information as borrowers, and to verify the accuracy of that information, when necessary.
Today, we’re happy to announce the launch of our Verification Suite, the first capability that helps borrowers and lenders stay on the same page when it comes to calculation and asset verification.
This new functionality helps lenders:
Verify asset data against source documents. This ensures that there is no discrepancy between, say, a loan tape CSV and a PDF that has key information on a particular asset.
Verify the borrowing base calculations conducted by borrowers. This ensures that lenders can easily review any unexpected Borrowing Base calculations and ensure that loans are never undercollateralized,
The Verification Suite plugs the communication and infrastructure gap between borrowers and lenders. It helps both sides transact with confidence, regardless of how complicated their data sources or credit agreement might be.
If you’re interested in learning more, we invite you to sign up for a custom demo.
Want to learn more about Finley?
Finley is private credit management software that helps private credit borrowers and asset managers streamline and monitor asset-backed loans. From tracking covenants and deliverables, to assembling funding requests and analyzing asset performance, Finley gives borrowers and lenders peace of mind when it comes to debt capital management. For more, check out our Product page.
Interested in learning more about what it’s like to work at Finley? Check out our careers page.