Approved Announces Funding and Public Release
The path to raising a $1M pre-seed round, and the road ahead
Well, the cat’s out of the bag — this morning, we announced that we raised a $1M pre-seed round, led by Social Capital and Precursor Ventures, and joined by Graph Ventures, Bluesky Equities, and several prominent angels who believe in Approved’s mission to reinvent the mortgage experience.
We’re also releasing the Approved Digital Mortgage Platform nationwide. A 6-month pilot program gave us insights that we’ve baked into our new release which is aimed at radically simplifying the home loan experience for lenders and borrowers.
The Challenge
Back in July of last year, I described how getting a mortgage for modern borrowers was like “Landing a rocketship in the stone age”. What’s changed since then? Not a lot.
Time
The average number of days to close a home loan crept up to 50 days. (Ellie Mae)
Money
Loan production costs for lenders have risen to $7,747 per loan, driven largely by manual processes. (Mortgage Bankers Association)
Overhead
The average loan document is copied 9 to 11 times. (Mortgage Compliance Magazine)
Pain
71% of millennials would rather go to the dentist than talk to a loan officer on the phone. (FirstData)
It’s not the fault of lenders or brokers (do you really think they like pushing all that paper?) Modern technology can exceed regulatory requirements and reduce loan defects, improving transparency for borrowers and saving time and money for everyone. But we’re stuck in a regulatory and financial environment where paperwork dominates a process which hasn’t materially changed in over 30 years. Approved is here to change that.
The Approved Pilot
Rather than simply moving outdated workflows online, Approved started by re-designing the experience of applying for a loan that puts the modern borrower first. Then we reverse-engineered the lender technology we needed to build to support that mission.
Over $200M in home loans were originated using Approved in our 6-month pilot. The results speak for themselves:
50% reduction in doc collection time
Borrowers got their supporting loan docs to lenders in half the time.
15% increase in borrower to lender attach rate
Borrowers more likely to work with lenders when Approved was available.
100% increase in supported volume
Lenders doubled their volume of loans with same loan officer, processing and underwriting teams.
We’re making it easy for lenders and brokers of any size to instantly compete in today’s modern world. National players spend millions on new technology, but keep those solutions proprietary. Approved unlocks the modern home loan experience for all lenders so they can focus on what they do best: providing extraordinary customer service and closing more loans, faster.
The Approved Digital Mortgage Platform
We’ll highlight our new features in detail in a later post, but here is a quick overview of what lenders and borrowers get from Approved with this launch:
White-labeled Dashboards
A delightful and frictionless platform for borrower and lender collaboration.
DocCast™
Automatically import original bank statements, W2s, 1099s, 1040s and paystubs.
DocVision™ Camera Scanning
Allows borrowers to securely “scan” documents using their mobile devices.
Digital Document Library
Support for all popular loan programs and overlays.
Get the full rundown at www.getapproved.io
And this is just the start — if you want to learn more about what we’re building, drop me a line to schedule a quick demo.
Thank You
It’s been a big year, and I’d like to thank our investors, advisors, customers, and of course, our engineering team in getting us to this important milestone. In particular, a big thanks to Nav, Mark, Bryan and Peter for burning the midnight oil to make it happen.
Now the real fun begins.
