BLOCKCHAIN
BLOCKCHAIN
BLOCKCHAIN
Blockchain home equity loan startup Figure raises $65M
Figure Technologies Inc., a home equity financial technology startup that uses blockchain tech to facilitate loans, today said it has raised $65 million in new funding to bolster its product offering and growth.
The Series B round was led by RPM Ventures and partners from DST Global and included Ribbit Capital, DCM, DCG, Nimble Ventures, Morgan Creek and several individual investors.
Founded in 2018, Figure leverages blockchain tech with artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to “unlock new access points for consumer credit products that can transform the financial lives of our customers.” The company primarily offers “home equity release solutions” that allow homeowners to borrow against the equity in their homes.
Figure’s main product, Figure Home Equity Loan Plus, is a fixed-rate loan that it says provides approval in as little as five minutes and funding in five days, all facilitated online. Where Figure gets interesting is that it all of its loans use a system called “Provenance,” a distributed stakeholder blockchain for loan origination.
“We are encouraged by what we’ve accomplished in our first year, and this investment validates Figure’s market potential,” Mike Cagney (pictured), Figure co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We originate, finance and sell every one of our loans on the Provenance blockchain, an industry first.”
Cagney has an interesting past. He was the founder of Social Finance Inc., known as SoFi, a millennial-focused finance company that was in the news Tuesday after it signed a deal with Coinbase Inc. to provide cryptocurrency exchange services. He stepped down as CEO from in 2017 over sexual harassment allegations.
At the time it was claimed that Cagney had “inappropriate relationships with SoFi employees” that apparently “helped foment a toxic workplace culture.” He was also accused of being “overaggressive in expanding SoFi’s business, skirting risk and compliance controls.” It’s not clear whether those allegations were ever proved to be true.
