CINCINNATI and NEW YORK —While it remains difficult to obtain financing from traditional means, small business borrowers can now reach out to friends, family and other high net-worth individuals to secure financing through a newly formed partnership between two of the country’s alternative lending companies.
Today, SoMoLend (www.SoMoLend.com) and GATE Global Impact (www.GATEimpact.com) formalized a deal that will make investing in business expansion and job growth easier than ever for the nation’s investors and small businesses. The new alliance ensures that industry standardization and best practices through streamlined technology will create and strengthen investor education, awareness and protection.
“NOW is the time to act for entrepreneurs and investors!” said Candace Klein, Founder & CEO of SoMoLend. “Prior to the signing of this new alliance, SoMoLend, a non-broker dealer, was not permitted to facilitate certain loan transactions, such as ‘friends-and-family’ and ‘accredited investor’ loans, that require broker dealer involvement. By collaborating with GATE, SoMoLend can now service many of these loans, thereby making it easier for both companies to service a broader range of borrowers and lenders. In the case of a typical small business borrower, their pool of possible lenders—both in their own neighborhoods and throughout the U.S.—could increase significantly.”
SoMoLend, named by Worth magazine earlier this year as one of the country’s Top 10 crowdfunding platforms, is the pioneering Web-based lending platform that connects small business borrowers with organizational lenders looking to make a return on investment.
The mission of GATE Global Impact is to fulfill the increasing global demand for market infrastructure that enables capital to identify and transact in investments that provide a sustainable social and/or environmental benefit and financial return. GATE has created a centralized electronic marketplace to facilitate the transactions of impact-focused investment products, and has developed a utility that provides efficiency, transparency, liquidity, and education that enables the transaction processes in a variety of markets. GATE provides an end-to-end solution inclusive of information, performance metrics, settlement, and clearance. These markets include private equity, private debt, microfinance, and environmental credits. GATE Global Impact ultimately believes they will have a positive influence by providing investors and entrepreneurs with a regulatory compliant marketplace in which to interact, allowing for future job creation and which will stimulate economic growth.
“This new relationship with SoMoLend now extends GATE’s effort to partner with best-of-breed participants in order to help create a crowdfunding marketplace equipped with maximum investor protections that fosters capital formation for America’s job creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses,” said Vince Molinari, CEO of GATE Impact.
Additionally, say both companies, the Strategic Lending Alliance offers important benefits to both lenders and borrowers that were not available previously. The new relationship now offers protections to investors that, traditionally, have been offered only in other transactions. The alliance also allows high net-worth individuals to make loans through SoMoLend, which was not possible before. Finally, the alliance enables SoMoLend to establish a foundation for servicing even more categories of loans with the final passage of the JOBS Act, which is expected to occur sometime in early 2013.
“We do expect this partnership to help us implement all forms of lending when final regulations are agreed upon and passed by the SEC,” said Klein. “For now, our new alliance helps SoMoLend lend to businesses that we could not lend to previously. And that translates to more opportunity for lenders and borrowers across the country.”
For more information about SoMoLend’s and GATE Impact’s Strategic Lending Alliance, contact Dan O’Keeffe at (513) 235-8638 or Bethany Miller at (513) 221-1526.