The first wave of fintech focused on helping those people who already had money. The bottom half of the population was mostly ignored, and those companies that did try failed to get traction. But in recent years, there has been a new breed of fintech company emerging squarely focused on helping those people who are living on the financial edge.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Rodney Williams, the President and Co-Founder of SoLo Funds. They call themselves a community finance platform and they are squarely focused on the subprime market. In fact, 82% of their members live in underserved zip codes. They are supplying a loan product that is sorely needed in these places.
In this podcast you will learn:
- The essential need that led to the founding of SoLo Funds.
- How their loan platform works.
- The three verifications new borrowers must go through.
- How many loans a typical borrower uses in a 12-month period.
- What the typical use cases are for the borrowed funds.
- Rodney's favorite stat on their borrowers.
- How they maintain the balance between borrowers and lenders on their marketplace.
- Their regulatory challenges and where they stand with regulators today.
- The three different ways they make money.
- The list of investors backing them.
- Why they recently decided to expand to Nigeria.
- Why their p2p lending model is perfect for the subprime market.
Connect with Rodney on LinkedIn
Connect with SoLo Funds on LinkedIn
Connect with Fintech One-on-One:
- Tweet me @PeterRenton
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes