Interview to Rob Frohwein, co-founder & Kabbagehead, who will be participating in the eFinTech Show:
- Could you tell the success of your business model?
Success is defined by different people different ways. We have a long way to go, but I think we’re on the path to global success. However, until we’re able to say we are serving – either directly or through adoption of our technology by large financial institutions – the majority of small businesses globally, I can’t suggest we’ve succeeded.
- In which countries are you working now? Are Spain in your plans?
We are actually launched in Australia, Spain, UK, Canada & Mexico through partnerships with a variety of financial partners such as ING, Santander and ScotiaBank. We license our technology to these banks (ING in Spain) so they can provide SMB’s with an experience similar to working with Kabbage in the U.S.!
- Kabbage can approve a loan just in minutes, how do you manage it?
We are a digitally native company and, as a result, require of ourselves complete automation in the process. There is absolutely no step of the lending process that can’t be automated. Failure to automate simply means you’ve note succeeded in eliminating the barriers of a manual approach decades in the making. Automation means that neither the customer has to interact with anyone at the bank to get a loan nor does anyone at the bank have to personally review the file.
- You have provided over $2.5 billion in funding to more than 100,000 businesses, what do you expect for this year?
We expect to lend more than $1.7B in 2017 alone, taking our total funding to well over $4B. We’ll issue more than 300,000 loans and serve more than 25,000 new small businesses.
- What is your expectation about the future of Crowdlending and Direct Lending?
I’m completely bullish on leveraging technology and data for lending. However, many of the smaller players think the goal is simply to provide loans to small businesses and the true technology comes later. That’s not how it works. You either start as a digitally native company and require the best of tech and data in your solution or you never will.
More in the eFinTech Show (March 22nd, 11:00h-11:45h):
