Investigo’s account of alternative lending brokers

On 23 June 2014 Björn Lindvall noted that Investigo’s Chris Cleland had included CreditSquare in an article on alternative lending. Cleland described brokers who knew providers outside conventional bank channels and who also assessed risk and pricing.

What a broker contributed

In that account, a broker could identify a lender that a business owner would have struggled to find, translate an unusual request into a financing proposal and help interpret the terms. Identifying which party would actually provide the funds remained important. A broker could arrange an introduction while a separate lender still decided whether to lend, what security to require and at what price.

The firm’s borrower process records how it described its own version of that work. Its alternative lenders article explains why some direct lending funds had little public profile at the time.