The landscape
Asset-based finance funds and private credit managers are now the marginal buyer of consumer loans, through forward flow, portfolio purchases, warehouse lending and ABS. Our founder has sat across the table from these investors as a Chief Credit Officer, so we bring an operator's view of how an originator's credit, fraud and servicing decisions show up in the loans you buy.
Where we help most
- Originator and platform due diligence from an operator's view
- Pricing forward flow and whole-loan portfolios
- Reading a lender's vintage, trigger and servicing data
- Ongoing originator and performance monitoring
Use cases for private credit and ABF
Lending and credit risk
Credit policy design and evaluation
Design a credit box, or test an existing one: who you approve, at what limit, with what verification, and how the application funnel and offers shape who applies. We measure which rules actually rank-order risk and what each change would do to approvals, losses and return.
Pricing and unit economics
Set prices from loss-adjusted returns, not a competitor's rate card. Risk-based pricing, price response and adverse selection, channel and acquisition cost, and return by segment.
Credit model strategy
Decide whether to build, buy or replace a credit model, and make sure it changes decisions. Custom versus bureau and vendor scores, model development oversight, deployment into policy, and performance monitoring.
Competitive and market analysis
Know what competitors are doing from what they have to disclose. Public filings, ABS trust performance, call reports, BDC marks and changes in lenders' published credit criteria.
Capital markets and partnerships
Portfolio valuation and sales
Price a whole-loan portfolio to buy, sell or mark. Loss, prepayment and cash-flow assumptions from tape-level data, diligence on the originator and its servicing, and a clear read on what a price implies.
Forward-flow deal design and evaluation
Structure or evaluate an agreement to sell or buy loans on an ongoing basis. Eligibility criteria, pricing mechanics, concentration limits, performance triggers, servicing terms and reporting.
Funding readiness: warehouse and ABS
Get a lender ready for warehouse lenders and securitization investors, or help an investor read a lender's data. Vintage and static-pool analysis, trigger headroom, data tapes and investor reporting.
Bank–fintech partnerships
Design or evaluate a partnership between a bank or credit union and a fintech originator. Our founder has been on both sides: buying fintech loans at a bank, and restructuring bank partnerships as the fintech.
Case studies
Rebuilding credit, pricing and modeling to support 4x origination growth
A BlackRock- and TruStage-backed personal lender with $6B+ originated since inception, funded through credit union and institutional partners, needed credit infrastructure built for growth and investor scrutiny.
Restructuring bank partnerships and building a valuation business for PE buyers
A Carlyle-backed student lending platform needed better unit economics from its bank partnerships, and saw an opening as banks sold student loan portfolios to private equity.
Related analysis
What SoFi's fair-value marks say about prime personal loan pricing
SoFi carries its personal loan book at fair value, one of the few public windows into how prime unsecured paper is priced. Q3 shows strong growth, lower losses, and a discount rate that rose less than rates did.
LightStream to Carlyle: working backwards to the deal math
$7.7B of prime personal loans sold for roughly 93.5 cents. Using only public disclosures, here is what the price implies about losses, duration and Carlyle's return, and why Truist was willing to take it.
A mark isn't a fact: what BDC loan marks reveal when they disagree
The same syndicated loan often sits on a dozen BDC balance sheets. If value were a fact, every lender would mark it at the same price. They don't, and how the marks converge carries information.
Up on safety, down on price: the K-shape comes to direct lending
Consumer credit has been splitting into a K for two years. Looking for the same shape in ~$300B of BDC direct-lending data turns up a flight to quality, and a question about how stable fair-value marks really are.
Are banks outsourcing lending to fintechs?
During the pandemic, the fastest-growing loan category at large US banks was loans to non-bank financial institutions, which mostly means warehouse lines to fintechs. Banks increasingly grow in assets where they don't own the customer.
Have a credit question with money behind it?
A portfolio to value, a credit box to rethink, a funding partner to convince. Send a short note and we'll reply within one business day.
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