Sixteen Leading Global Fintechs join Spring Labs' Founding Industry Program

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Spring Labs, which is developing the Spring Protocol, a network designed to transform how information and data are shared globally, announces today that industry leaders at the intersection of finance and technology SoFi, OnDeck Capital, Avant, GreenSky, Funding Circle, BlueVine, Fundation, Upgrade, Fundbox, and Better Mortgage, among others, have joined the Spring Founding Industry Partners (SFIP) Program to help further combat fraud and enhance their ID verification capabilities, effectively lowering the cost and increasing the security of issuing financial products.  SFIP participants, in aggregate, have helped fund more than $100 billion in consumer or small business loans since inception.  This announcement follows the recent news that Gary Cohn, former Director of the U.S. National Economic Council and former President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs, has joined Spring Labs as an advisor.

The Spring Founding Industry Partners ("SFIP") Program is comprised of financial services institutions and data furnishers that have partnered with Spring Labs to collaborate on the research, development, and implementation of the Spring Protocol prior to its public launch.  Program participants are collectively focused on creating a secure and regulatorily compliant way to leverage data to solve pressing problems related to ID verification and fraud within their respective sectors.

"As an ever-increasing amount of financial transactions move online, new types of mission-critical fraud and ID verification solutions based on information sharing must be developed," stated Noah Breslow, CEO of OnDeck Capital.  "We believe the team at Spring Labs has the right background to galvanize industry leaders around the creation of a new and innovative network."

The Spring Protocol differs from existing data exchange solutions in that it enables network participants to exchange information without sharing underlying data, effectively decoupling data ownership from data value.  This unprecedented approach to information sharing leverages advanced cryptography and blockchain technology.  The Spring Protocol mitigates the need for data aggregators and allows network participants to exchange information securely and anonymously in a peer-to-peer fashion. 

For financial institutions, the Spring Protocol is intended to reduce the risk of data breaches by eliminating the need for data replication.  The Protocol also should cut the cost of issuing financial products by reducing intermediation costs in data sourcing and by allowing institutions to gain access to new types of valuable data that were too competitively-sensitive to share through existing channels.

For consumers, the Spring Protocol should reduce the likelihood your data is compromised as part of a hack, by reducing the replication of data as part of standard ID verification and fraud mitigation processes, effectively improving transparency and security for consumers.  "Thin File" or "Credit Invisible" consumers might also benefit greatly from the Spring Protocol, as improved security means that broader array of institutions are willing to share identification data to build the profiles of underrepresented consumers in the global credit ecosystem.

"We are extremely excited about the initial partners and this is an incredible opportunity to expand the development of the Spring Network," says John Sun, President and Chief Product Officer of Spring Labs. "We have plans to include other verticals in the near future, and look forward to announcing those partnerships in the coming months."  

About SoFi
SoFi helps people achieve financial independence to realize their ambitions. Our products for borrowing, saving, spending, investing, and protecting give our more than half a million members fast access to tools to get their money right. SoFi membership comes with the key essentials for getting ahead, including career advisors and connection to a thriving community of like-minded, ambitious people. For more information, visit SoFi.com.

About OnDeck Capital
OnDeck (NYSE: ONDK) is the proven leader in transparent and responsible online lending to small business. Founded in 2006, the company pioneered the use of data analytics and digital technology to make real-time lending decisions and deliver capital rapidly to small businesses online.  Today, OnDeck offers a wide range of term loans and lines of credit customized for the needs of small business owners.  OnDeck has provided over $10 billion in loans to customers in 700 different industries across the United States, Canada and Australia.

About Avant
Based in Chicago, Illinois, Avant is one of the fastest-growing companies in the thriving fintech sector. Avant's mission is to lower the barriers and costs of borrowing for consumers, which it does through its industry-leading digital lending platform. Avant also makes its technology platform, Amount, available to banks and other financial institutions that are looking for an easy and customizable way to offer digital lending services to consumers. Avant has secured more than $4 billion in funding and facilitated more than $5 billion in loans to 600,000 people worldwide since the company was founded in 2012. In 2015, Avant was named to Forbes America's Most Promising Companies  list as well as Forbes list of Next Billion Dollar Startups. For more information, visit www.avant.com.

About Green Sky
GreenSky, Inc. (NASDAQ: GSKY) is a leading financial technology company Powering Commerce at the Point of Sale for a growing ecosystem of merchants, consumers and banks. Our highly scalable, proprietary technology platform enables over 14,000 merchants to offer frictionless promotional payment options to consumers, driving increased sales volume and accelerated cash flow. Banks leverage GreenSky’s technology to provide loans to super-prime and prime consumers nationwide. Since our inception, approximately 2.1 million consumers have financed over $15 billion of transactions using our paperless, real time “apply and buy” technology. GreenSky is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, please visit www.greensky.com.

About Funding Circle
Funding Circle (www.fundingcircle.com) is a global small business loans platform, matching small businesses who want to borrow with investors who want to lend in the UK, US, Germany and the Netherlands. Since launching in 2010, investors across Funding Circle's geographies – including more than 85,000 retail investors, banks, asset management companies, insurance companies, government-backed entities and funds – have lent over £5.6 billion to more than 56,000 businesses globally.

About BlueVine
BlueVine provides flexible working capital financing to small and medium-sized businesses, giving them quick access to funds needed to purchase inventory, cover expenses, or expand operations. A fintech pioneer, BlueVine developed a fully-online cloud-based platform for invoice factoring, revolutionizing the 4,000-year old financing system that allows businesses to receive cash advances on outstanding invoices.  BlueVine also offers FlexCredit, business line of credit financing based on 6-month and 12-month payment terms.  Based in Redwood City, Calif., BlueVine has raised $273 million in equity and debt funding and is funded by Lightspeed Venture Partners, 83NORTH, Correlation Ventures, Citi Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Rakuten Fintech Fund,  and other private investors.

About Fundation
Fundation Group LLC is a credit solutions provider focused on the small business market nationally. Fundation is a leader in providing technology and application processing services to support more than 25 super regional, regional and community banks. Fundation's solutions enable its financial services clients to develop a digital lending capability, provide a great customer experience, drive cost efficiency into their small business lending program, and maximize the number of customers they can serve. Fundation's services range from simple referral partnerships to customized, integrated private labeled lending programs. The Company also partners with a wide array of organizations that serve the small business market in various capacities to deliver credit products to the business community nationwide. For more information, please visit www.fundation.com.

About Upgrade
Upgrade is a consumer credit platform that combines access to affordable credit with credit monitoring and education tools to help consumers better understand their credit and unlock their credit potential. Upgrade employs over 300 team members and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with an operations center in Phoenix, Arizona and technology centers in Chicago, Illinois and Montreal, Canada. Upgrade does not facilitate loans to residents of Connecticut, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and West Virginia. All loans originated through the Upgrade platform are issued by WebBank, Member FDIC. More information is available at: https://www.upgrade.com.

About Fundbox
Fundbox is a leading technology platform focused on disrupting the $21 trillion B2B commerce market by building the world's first AI-enabled business capital platform designed to accelerate B2B commerce. With Fundbox, sellers (of all sizes) can quickly increase average order volumes (AOV) and improve close rates by offering more competitive net terms and payment plans to their SMB buyers.  With heavy investments in machine learning and the ability to accurately assess credit risk in a matter of minutes, Fundbox is reimaging B2B credit and payments products in new category-defining ways.

About Better Mortgage
Launched in 2016, Better.com is a full stack mortgage lender digitizing every step of the home financing process to make homeownership more affordable and accessible. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Goldman Sachs, and Pinebrook, Better is focused on customer advocacy, putting consumers back in control of the most important financial decision of their lives. Recently named Best Mortgage Lender for Customer Service by Nerdwallet, Better has an intuitive online platform, complemented by non-commissioned staff that guide customers through the process, starting with how much house they can afford or how much they can save through to close, completely jargon-free with airtight certainty and the best rate possible. For more information, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Spring Labs
Spring Labs (Springcoin Inc.) is a technology company building the Spring Protocol, a blockchain-based network that enables network participants to exchange valuable information without sharing underlying source data.  The initial use case for the Spring Protocol will facilitate the exchange of identity, fraud, and risk information among financial institutions to create a more efficient, transparent, and secure ecosystem for consumer financial data than the one that exists today.  Spring Labs was founded in 2017 and has offices in Chicago & Los Angeles. To learn more, visit SpringLabs.com.

SOURCE Spring Labs

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