What is Terrace Finance?

Nobody likes being rejected. Not by a date. Not in a job interview. Not at a sports try-out. And certainly not when applying for financing for an important purchase or goal.

Working with lenders but also having needs for financing, I’ve seen both sides of financial rejection. As a serial entrepreneur, I’ve received my share of turn-downs when applying for financing. I always wanted to teach the lender why my situation was different and they should trust me. But what I have come to learn is that each lender has a very specific appetite for the type of financing and the customer profile that they make offers to. Meanwhile, each applicant’s needs have particular characteristics that are also fixed. With literally thousands of lenders and hundreds of applicant attributes, getting these two things aligned is nearly impossible!

It got me thinking — if finding the right financing was so time-consuming and frustrating for me, it must be the same or worse for the average person who has not worked in the space. There are online lenders, banks, lenders who send mail to your house, lenders who are tied to stores, and these new fintech lenders. Knowing who can best serve you at a fair offer is impossible!    

So, you get the problem — how do lenders who want a particular type of customer and applicants who need a specific type of lender find each other? Well, we think we’ve found a unique way of solving the problem.  

In the fall of 2018, together with my co-founders Mark Brennan, Board Chairman, and Robin Eitel, Senior Vice President of Sales, we pooled our decades of finance industry experience to conceive a better way to align the lenders, the applicants and the merchants that sell products and services. We created a full spectrum gateway for financing which allows people with a wide range of credit profiles and situations to submit one application and be matched with a compatible lender and lending product. It required the creation of an intelligent decision and documentation engine, the assembly of a team of financial, IT, and customer service experts, and the establishment of lender and merchant networks. In August of 2019, we processed our first applications, and the Terrace Finance platform was officially live! I am proud to serve as CEO of this exciting new company, Terrace Finance.

But our work is not done. Our team is continuously growing and curating our roster of lenders with the goal of covering EVERYBODY who needs financing for purchases big or small.  We also are growing out vertical market solutions with unique features that cater to their special needs.

Our ‘waterfall’ (hence the name ‘Terrace’) is what helps us narrow down the options to our best lending partner. We use the lenders’ very specific parameters to ensure they are only sent applications that match their appetite so that more people get offers. If one lender can’t make an offer, our waterfall pushes the same application to another lender.

The Terrace Team likes making happy, hassle-free matches! We will remain unwaveringly committed to finding fair financing for all applicants, sourcing solid applications to our lenders, and providing a broad easy-to-use financing solution to our merchants. And the more people who join our platform, the more we learn about how we can make it better.

Sound like something your business or financial institution would like to be a part of for the mutual benefit of our network? Contact me to learn more about joining the family — as a lender, merchant, or applicant.