Financial technology and services company, LendStreet, today announced it raised a $28 million facility from Flock Specialty Finance.
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The additional funding will allow the company to help more consumers restructure their debt and reclaim their financial health, says CEO, Jerry Nemorin.
“Flock’s capital allows us to begin scaling out loan portfolio and expand our customer pipeline,†Nemorin says.
“Aside from this financial partnership, Flock brings significant experience and expertise in this market segment. Their mission and values are closely aligned with ours.â€
LendStreet and Nemorin are profiled in the April edition of Black Enterprise magazine. The Haitian-born Nemorin spent years working on Wall Street helping businesses do the same sort of debt restructure his company offers consumers.
He learned the ins-and-outs of negotiating with banks to settle debts on behalf of his business clients.
“I was reading a lot of articles on how consumers were going through the same process and the same issues but a lot of those consumers did not have a solution that really helped them,†says Nemorin on how he came up with the idea of LendStreet.
Nemorin launched LendStreet in 2013. Prior to this announcement, the Oakland-based company raised $3.2 million in seed funding from a slew of top investors including Accion Venture Lab, Center for Financial Services Innovation, CrunchFund, Cross Culture Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Serious Change.
After enrolling customers into a LendStreet program, the service loans those customers money to pay off creditors at discounted, negotiated rates.
The loan requires customers make six months of consecutive payments as per terms of the enrollment agreement.
Last year, LendStreet was selected as one of nine financial technology innovators making a difference in the lives of American households by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI).
“Having tracked the progress at LendStreet for the last couple of years, we are excited to help the company scale the business on a mission to help consumers struggling to pay off debt,†said Michael Flock, chairman, and CEO, Flock.
“The team at LendStreet is first-rate. We like their business model, technology, and processes,†Flock said.
Nemorin says the new influx of capital means the company needs to do more. “It’s great to be recognized for being what we always wanted it to be, but there’s still so much we can do and will do, to make finance work for everybody,†he says.