Sacramento fintech company Acorn Finance has partnered with AccuLynx, the leading cloud management software provider for roofers nationwide.
Acorn’s technology connects homeowners and contractors with home equity loan offers from varying financial institutions to do home improvements.
"Acorn Finance empowers contractors to grow their sales with a financing solution, and it empowers homeowners to secure better funding with competitive rates by providing a variety of pre-qualified offers from a network of trusted lenders," said Acorn Finance CEO Giri Addanki.
Roofing is a good fit for Acorn's financing model, since in many cases homeowners need the work done, whether they can afford to pay for it at the time or not.
Acorn Finance offers roofing contractors who use AccuLynx embedded software that allows them to offer financing options to their customers directly and in seconds. The loan offers load in seconds, and there is no fee to the contractor.
AccuLynx, which is based in the Chicago area, started in 2006 and released its software set in 2008 specifically for roofing contractors. Its business-management software provides contractors a suite of software that includes customer relationship management, photo archives, permitting, estimating, project management and production and labor management.
Acorn Finance, launched in 2018, has both a business-to-consumer model and a business-to-business model where it works with contractors who do home improvement work. The company raised $1 million in June, and plans to raise another round of growth capital in the near future.
Since it works with a variety of lenders, Acorn can offer loans as low as $500 and it can go up to $500,000, so it can finance things as small as replacing a stove to as large as building an accessory dwelling unit. Acorn doesn’t do the lending, rather its lending partners provide the loans. Acorn gets paid a fee from the lenders who make loans through the platform, Addanki said.
This new partnership is an expansion of what Acorn has been doing for over a year. Most of Acorn’s loans are for home improvement, but some borrowers use the home equity loan to consolidate debt or to pull out some equity, he said.
Acorn also works with Point Digital Finance Inc., a Palo Alto company that provides equity sharing loans. Under that model, Point doesn’t charge monthly payments for the loan. Rather, it takes an equity share in the home.
Acorn is among a growing cluster of fintech companies in the Sacramento region.
