A lender will always want to know as much as possible about a business’ health before extending credit. That’s not changed, but until recently the only data that could help in that regard was slow and expensive to produce. And in turn, SME loan application processes were slow and expensive to complete. To make matters worse, these slow and expensively-produced numbers are seldom fit for purpose, even the old faithful financial reports are only a summary of what was actually happening, not a deep dive into the business mechanics.This is maybe why some entrepreneurs, like Alek Koenig, are solving the problem by circumventing financial reports and going straight to the source.“But the reality of Settle was, I was using this accounts payable software and I just thought it was the worst product I'd ever used… so I was like, hey, why don't we just build better accounts payable software? So that's when I was thinking about my background in credit and lending, and thinking, well, if we could combine this accounts payable software with lending, then we could actually make the product 10x better and actually help these businesses out.”In this episode, we talk about consumer lending and SME lending, about creating the data you need to lend against, about removing friction, and about transitioning from traditional credit to start-up and from employee to entrepreneur.You can learn more about Settle and how to work with them on their homepageYou can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me at brendan@howtolendmoneytostrangers.showA full written transcript with timestamps can be found on HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.ShowYou can also find my pulpy action-adventure novels in all their formats on Amazon Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.