FinTech Avant Boosts Financing Capacity With New $200 Million Deal

FinTech company Avant closed a $200 million personal loan securitization that it said it expects to provide over $500 million in financing capacity over its 24-month life.

The transaction also marks Avant’s first deal to receive AAA ratings from both Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA), the company said in a Thursday (Feb. 26) press release.

This is Avant’s 23rd personal loan securitization since the company’s founding in 2012 and its seventh revolving transaction, according to the release.

Combined with Avant’s existing asset funding commitments, this transaction brings the company’s long-term funding commitments to about $2.5 billion and supports continued growth of its personal loan and credit card business, per the release.

“Over more than a decade, we’ve built a funding model designed to support the business through different market environments,” Avant Chief Financial Officer Kevin Friedrich said in the release. “Transactions like this reinforce that foundation and allow us to continue to scale our business and support our customers.”

Avant uses data and machine learning to meet the needs of middle-income Americans with credit cards, personal loans and a personal financial management tool, according to the release.

The company has connected more than 4 million unique customers to $13.2 billion in personal loans since 2013 and 2.9 million credit cards since 2017, per the release.

Avant launched a free financial health tool called Credit Builder in January, following a pilot launch in April, saying the tool provides credit monitoring, goal setting, actionable insights to support credit improvement and dedicated support in the event of identity theft. Among the initial users of Credit Builder, 87% are monthly active users and 75% have seen their credit score improve or remain steady.

In December, Avant said the number of existing customers on its platform had surpassed 2 million and that the company had served more than 4.3 million unique customers since its founding in 2012. The company attributed its growth to the multiple products it offers on the platform, including access to personal loans, credit cards and personal financial management tools, and its artificial intelligence-driven credit decisioning engine designed to optimize credit performance and the customer experience.