We are thrilled to announce our investment in CreditApp as part of a $2.7M financing round. CreditApp is a Calgary-based Finance and Insurance (F&I) software product that connects car dealerships and auto lenders to facilitate the loan approval process for customers buying vehicles. The platform also streamlines the underwriting process for lenders by using AI to offer innovative tools like their Verification Tool, which integrates income verification and analysis, real-time fraud and ID checks, and generates a CreditApp Confidence Score.
The opportunity to support the CreditApp team excites us as it combines two key elements that leading companies are built on – namely, a strong team of execution-oriented entrepreneurs and a large consolidated market with incumbents positioned for disruption.
THE ADVENT OF CREDITAPP AND THE TEAM
The idea for CreditApp emerged from Evan Ferguson’s experience building his auto financing business, Quantifi Lending. He experienced firsthand the dissatisfaction of customers, lenders and dealerships with the existing financing process. The process is incredibly manual, tedious, and time-consuming for all parties because, at its center, there are solutions more than two decades old.
Evan recognized that accomplishing his ambitious vision of disrupting the market requires an ambitious and experienced team. This led to the formation of a deeply experienced team at CreditApp, including the addition of former Inovia EIR Marcos Lopez as its CEO. Marcos was previously the CEO of Solium, an equity administration platform acquired by Morgan Stanley for ~$1B in 2019. In addition to his operating experience, Marcos has held board positions and advisor roles to successful Canadian FinTech companies, including EQ Bank and Zayzoon.
A LARGE MARKET READY FOR DISRUPTION
The opportunity that CreditApp is targeting is large as the Canadian Auto Sales market is a ~$40B market with 4.8M cars sold annually. Most of these cars (approximately 3.9M) are sold through dealerships where most customers utilize financing. Despite this significant opportunity, innovation in the market has remained stagnant, with two incumbent legacy solutions owning a staggering 95% market share. These market dynamics present an exciting opportunity for a new leader to emerge that provides lenders with better tools and dealerships with a seamless financing experience.
The disruptive power of FinTech companies remains a key focus area for Inovia. CreditApp joins Inovia’s impressive portfolio of FinTech companies, including WealthSimple, Pine, and Plenty. We are always looking for category-defining FinTech companies and are excited to meet founders. Please reach us at [email protected] and [email protected].