SAN FRANCISCO – Informed.IQ, a technology company used by financial institutions to instantly and accurately verify income, assets, residence, and other loan origination data and documents has raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding. This investment enables Informed.IQ to serve the growing demand for automation from consumer lenders providing auto loans, mortgages, HELOCs, and personal loans. Informed’s technology brings automation to the repetitious and error-prone manual process of reviewing and verifying loan applications for funding. This round of funding was co-led by Nyca Partners and US Venture Partners with participation from notable angels such as Manuel Bronstein, former VP of Product at Google and Dan Romero, former VP of Coinbase. Informed.IQ has attracted industry veterans such as Tim Russi, former President of Ally Financial and Michael DeVito, former Head of Mortgage at Wells Fargo Bank to the Company as advisors.
Informed.IQ provides financial institutions with the ability to automate the verifications of income, assets, residence, insurance, and other consumer application data points, enabling real-time and more reliable credit decisions and funding. Informed.IQ performs these verifications in seconds with 99% accuracy, versus the industry standard of 85-90% achieved in manual processes. Financial institutions get to set their own policies and procedures, which enables verifications to be automated in-line with each lender’s requirements instantly, regardless of what time of day the application is received. Because there is full visibility into the application package in real-time, if there are any discrepancies or issues with any of the data sources or documents, the applicant is notified through Informed.IQ’s patented SMS technology and can correct defects right away from their smartphone. With its Robotic Process Automation trained on documents and data sources from the Dark Web, Informed.IQ also flags possibly fraudulent documentation for further review.
According to Justin Wickett, CEO of Informed.IQ, “Income verification has always been a bottleneck for credit underwriting and funding. When there is a mismatch between applicant’s stated income and the available data sources, Informed.IQ automates verification of income in-line with Fair Lending laws and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Americans are earning income from more varied sources than ever before, and while new data sources become available, training loan officers to properly tally up and verify all earnings for an applicant has become increasingly error-prone and subject to bias. We help banks fully understand their applicants’ complex income situation in real-time, enabling verifications to be automated in seconds rather than days or even weeks.”
“We couldn’t be more excited about being part of the team at Informed.IQ,” said Jeremy Solomon, partner at Nyca Partners. “Income verification is just the start. The team at Informed.IQ has a proven product that is scalable to help banks automate their verification requirements using AI and machine learning.” According to Nyca’s Managing Partner, Hans Morris, “Informed’s mission is to ensure that all borrowers are getting the best rate available by quickly accepting and analyzing financial data that up until now went unrecognized.”
Steve Krausz, Managing Partner at US Ventures added, “Informed.IQ’s technology solves what today is a tedious manual process through proprietary automated error reduction. Informed.IQ eliminates potential bias, conscious or unconscious, that can unknowingly appear in underwriting and funding decisions. Informed.IQ protects its customers from exposure to costly legal and reputational risk.”
Informed.IQ’s primary customers are financial institutions engaged in retail lending looking for more pro-consumer, accurate, and fast income, asset, residence, and insurance verification. Currently, five of the top 10 auto lenders use Informed’s solutions and over $91 billion of loans were funded with the help of Informed.IQ’s technology. Fueled with $30 million in funding, Informed.IQ is expanding to also help Health and Human Services programs automate the adjudication of consumer applications, greatly accelerating the application decision timeline and providing applicants with real-time visibility into their application process.
About Informed.IQ:
San Francisco-based Informed.IQ uses machine learning and AI technologies to instantly verify income, assets, residence, insurance and other consumer data points, enabling real-time and more reliable credit decisions that better comply with Fair Lending laws. Informed.IQ’s machine learning models are trained to process hundreds of different types of documents and consumer-permissioned data sources, automating stipulation clearance for lenders. In 2020, Informed.IQ processed close to a million consumer credit applications for several major US lenders, automating over $91 billion in loan originations to date. Informed.IQ’s AI automates verifications with a 99% accuracy in seconds with no humans-in-the-loop. Originally focused on auto lending, where five of the top ten auto lenders use Informed.IQ, financial institutions now use Informed.IQ’s technology to help offer mortgages, credit cards, and automated bank account openings to their customers.
