Decipher Credit Launches SMB Lending Partnership With Validis

Loan origination platform Decipher Credit has teamed up with small business financial data provider Validis.

The partnership will allow commercial lenders to extract financial and accounts receivable data in real-time, letting small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) go from “application to automated spreading” in seconds, the companies said Monday (April 22). 

By automating the collection and analysis of financial data, the companies said they shave weeks off the commercial lending process and giving SMBs faster access to capital.

“We partner with the world’s leading data and technology providers to bring innovation to the lending space,” said Raul Velarde, CEO of Decipher Credit. “Through this partnership, commercial lenders can instantly access business customers’ accounting data and accelerate the approval process by leveraging some of the most widely used accounting packages.”

As PYMNTS wrote last week, SMBs often find themselves in a struggle to land the capital they need to grow, making the need for innovative solutions crucial.

PYMNTS Intelligence research has found that just about 8.5% of SMBs have said that they’d found working capital loans from banks were readily available. 

“More than half of respondents said coming into 2024 that they would consider tapping new financing,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “Of the companies mulling new financing, the data shows that more than 26% would consider using an online lender; about a third would use a large national bank.”

It’s why for the “AI Effect” series, PYMNTS spoke with MJ Jiang, chief strategy officer at Credibly, and Ryan Rosett, Credibly’s co-founder and CEO, to examine how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the landscape of SMB underwriting.

“Underwriting small businesses isn’t simple,” Rosett said, explaining that while having access to working capital is “imperative” for small businesses, there is a gap in the market for alternative lenders to fill. 

At the same time, any effective financing solution worth investing in still requires risk assessment and customer-centricity. This is where generative AI comes in. 

“Underwriting is governed by risk assessment,” Jiang explained. “There’s a lot of information about these businesses that is being collected throughout the underwriting process … and there’s a great opportunity in applying generative AI to extract more information and more understanding about the relationships between that information. It’s something that, when using traditional methods, hasn’t been possible up to this point.”