Medical professionals may face challenges when seeking financing for private practice, especially when working with traditional banks' lengthy and complex process.
Charlotte-based LenDRgroup Consulting, a startup that connects health-care practices with financing and other services, aims to improve that process through its concierge approach. The company, founded in 2019, has roughly 500 lenders on its tech platform to provide finance and business consulting services to independent dentists, physicians and veterinarians nationwide.
LenDRgroup works to build a relationship with its clients to match them with the lender that will provide the most value.
"We're not money brokers," Victor Holloway, co-founder and chief financial and operating officer at LenDRgroup, told CBJ. "We're finance consultants that are seeing that deal through, from start to finish, and just totally removing the doctor from having to get involved with any aspect of getting this deal approved."
It takes only three steps for clients to obtain capital — contact LenDRgroup about their goals, receive a finance strategy, and then be matched with a solution.
Holloway is not new to the medical finance industry. In 2008, he co-founded The Medicus Group, a specialty wealth management firm that solely worked with health-care providers. He said many of his clients there would ask for help with obtaining practice financing.
"Over a period of time, it was just something me and my team became very good at, and we just went down the road of figuring out whether or not this was something that could actually scale," Holloway said.
He pointed out that, in addition, he is married to a dentist who has often asked him for help with financing throughout her career.
Those two factors eventually drove Holloway and co-founder Jason Householder to build LenDRgroup. He sold The Medicus Group in January and is now fully focused on the startup.
In addition to practice financing and business consulting, LenDRgroup offers equipment financing, a Covid-recovery program, merchant services for health-care practices, and payroll and human resources.
LenDRgroup's online platform helps gather data in a more streamlined process. It is working on phase two of the technology, which will feature a scoring algorithm to help the company better pair medical workers with the right lender. The updated technology will be complete within the next four months, Holloway said.
The company is also working to bring on more qualified bankers to its lender portfolio.
April Smith, chief marketing officer at LenDRgroup, said clients traditionally spend about 40 to 60 hours on researching, applying and all the other steps it takes to acquire practice financing. The startup reduces that time commitment to about three to five hours.
"Our goal as a company is really to eliminate as much of that effort on their part as possible," she said. "Our technology plays a huge role in that."
Since LenDRgroup's inception four years ago, it has facilitated about $450 million worth of loans. Last year alone, its total was $120 million.
