Startups on Fire — Firms more than five years old
Finalist: FinLocker
Clayton-based FinLocker, which has developed a financial app to help homebuyers, hopes a fresh round of funding will help it grow further. FinLocker in May said it raised $17 million in a Series B funding round that included backing from existing investors. The investors include Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Radian Group Inc. (NYSE: RDN), a provider of mortgage insurance and other real estate services. Radian in January said it had invested an undisclosed amount in FinLocker.
FinLocker has created what it calls a “financial fitness app” that collects users' financial data to help them prepare to purchase a home. The app helps with building credit, budgeting and storing financial documents. FinLocker offers its app to mortgage lenders, banks and credit unions, which white-label the software and provide it to their customers. For lenders, the software aims to provide the ability to generate leads. FinLocker's website says its clients include several lenders, including AmeriHome Mortgage, Delmar Mortgage and Amerant Mortgage. FinLocker said it has expanded its customer roster in the past year, with consumer usage of its app increasing too.
What was your company’s biggest achievement in the past year?
To increase our business clients by 150% over 2023 (May 2023 to May 2024) and consumer users by 50% over 2023 (May 2023 to May 2024), we significantly enhanced the FinLocker platform to provide consumers with a personalized path to overcome their financial challenges to achieve and sustain homeownership based on where they are on their homeownership journey (one of five options) and their goals (select all that apply of the 6 options), combined by analyzing their consumer-permissioned financial data. On the client side, we enhanced the admin portal with consumer data-insights insights and added six email notifications to provide mortgage originators with real-time visibility into their sales database, the actions their consumers were taking using their white-labeled app and showing their consumers' progress to improve their financial health to qualify for a mortgage.
What is your company’s top goal for the next year?
As a B2B2C company, our goals are to serve our clients and their consumers. We are dedicated to enhancing the FinLocker app with new features, such as using the data insights in the consumers' mortgage readiness to help them quickly identify homes they can afford to purchase in the integrated property search widget. We also aim to improve the existing features by integrating AI to enhance the homeownership snapshot's action plan, provide personalized advice to help more consumers achieve mortgage eligibility, and use machine learning to identify cost-saving opportunities to increase consumer engagement with the FinLocker app. We are confident that when our current mortgage originator clients see more of their consumers achieving mortgage eligibility, this momentum will help us gain more mortgage lender clients and increase the number of their mortgage originators using the app.
Are you currently hiring? If so, for what roles?
We received our Series B Funding in May 2024, which will enable FinLocker to add a few strategic roles to the company in the coming months. We are currently working through the details and planning.
See photos from the 2024 Fire Awards event below:
