Investing in Borrowell to make consumer credit fast, fair and friendly

By: Jean-François Marcoux
General Partner, White Star Capital

In a world where you can order fresh food to your doorstep at the click of a button, collect loyalty points on a digital app or print your lost keys in store, is it really acceptable to have to go through decade old procedures to get a consumer loan or snail mail forms for your credit score? We DON’T think so, and that is why we are proud to be backing Borrowell, a Toronto based fintech leader offering personal Loans, free credit scores and recommendations for personalized financial products.

At White Star Capital, we are seeing digital access to financial products increase worldwide. According to recent Marketline reports, Canada’s retail lending market grew 4.7% in 2016 to reach $1.5bn and is on par with markets like the UK ($1.6bn) and Germany ($1.4bn).

However, digital adoption in Fintech is less than half that of other markets of similar size like the UK or Germany.

By becoming a trusted adviser to consumers and helping them take control of their financial identity with free credit scores and access to relevant financial products, such as personal loans, Borrowell is changing this. As proof, over three hundred thousand Canadians have used Borrowell to learn their credit score or check their rate on a loan. This doesn’t include the many Borrowell serves through their partnership with CIBC.

We chose to invest in Borrowell for several key reasons, here are a few:

• Borrowell’s digital first platform, captures lending applications data, credit score patterns and loan histories of thousands of users, which translate into powerful data sets. This “data as a competitive advantage” enables the company to provide personalized product recommendations and to better predict and build the financial tools and products that consumers will need to improve their financial well-being.
• Borrowell is the clear Canadian leader in the B2C fintech space while driving significant B2B revenues by partnering and licensing their front and back-end solutions. White Star’s global network and resources will help Borrowell to scale more quickly, both in Canada and abroad and become the go-to partner for banks and financial institutions globally.
• Increased fintech adoption is inevitable in underserved markets including Canada and Borrowell has the right product and team, led by Andrew Graham, to capture this opportunity.

We are also pleased to invest along Portag3 and several other great investors with whom we look forward to an exciting journey ahead as we help bring Borrowell to more Canadians and others abroad.

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White Star Capital is an early-stage Venture Capital firm investing in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the iconic companies of tomorrow. With offices in London, New York and Montreal and a team with deep operational expertise, we partner closely with the teams we back to help them scale globally. For more information, visit www.whitestarvc.com