Fintech Franchise Network completes $18m initial capital funding round
Fintech Franchise Network (FFN) has successfully closed its initial capital round, totaling $18 million from two key strategic funding partners, which has allowed the business to launch. The bulk of these funds will be used as lending capital to fund non-prime consumer lending originations, with the balance being deployed as working capital.
Founded in 2022 as an expansion channel of Bright Side Loans, FFN is leveraging founder Greg Fasana’s non-prime lending platform that successfully brings together applied data science, custom models, strong analytics and work-flow management across the entire application and customer lifecycle. “We look forward to increased opportunities for serving additional customers in the Alternative Financial Services (AFS) market,” Fasana stated.
“Serving non-prime customers through delivering small loan solutions has always been part of our collective DNA,” said Glenn Hafner, CEO, Fintech Franchise Network. “With our funding and concurrent launch, in addition to serving existing and future customers, we value the opportunity to deliver for our capital partners and investors.” Hafner added, “As FFN builds out our management team with proven consumer finance professionals, these experts and associated relationships will ensure our success as we truly are ‘bringing the consumer finance band back together.'”
“We’re leveraging decades of experience at major consumer lending brands, using the latest fintech and proprietary tools while delivering for customers via a unique lending channel – franchises,” outlined Hafner.
Over the next five years, FFN is looking to deliver 28 virtual lending branches (franchises) with an expected future valuation in excess of $300M. In addition to strategic leadership and management, Hafner is also responsible for capital raising and investor relations.
“There isn’t a week that goes by where we aren’t asked Why do franchises?” stated Chris Jerzewski, COO, who brings decades of consumer lending experience to the team. “By franchising, we’re able to build better quality customer relationships coupled with our team having an ownership vs. employee mentality – both of which are significant strategic advantages within this customer lending segment,” outlined Jerzewski.
“As we expand our unique virtual environment, we are focusing on superior customer and operational execution while having a solid foundation of analytics, data and dashboards to ensure we deliver our expected results.”
“Over the course of my extensive career, it’s rare to find a company with such rich and varied data sources which are used for modeling and analysis, which, when combined with the short outcome cycles needed to inform and continually refine key models and strategies, allows for continuous and near real-time enhancements to both the efficiency and effectiveness of analytically driven decisioning and workflow orchestration,” according to Sandeep Devagiri, Chief Data Scientist. “Over the past several years, we have developed and tested a significant amount of intellectual property (IP) which has enabled this expansion. As we expand, we will continue to deliver value for Fintech Franchise Network via additional intellectual property and process management.”
With nearly 65% of the American workers living “pay check to pay check”, expanding Bright Side Loan’s lending capabilities is key to serving these non-prime customers. As the business expands via Fintech Franchise Network, Bright Side Loans will continue to serve as the customer-facing brand name, identity, and as a “testing and learning laboratory” for FFN.
