Flinks + Propel - Giving the underserved across North America access to credit

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As one of Canada’s top growing companies in 2023, Propel’s transformational fintech platform has already helped customers access over one million loans in Canada and the United States and over one billion dollars in credit – and they’re still growing.

Propel facilitates access to credit through its operating brands, and on behalf of its bank partners — Fora Credit, CreditFresh and MoneyKey — in an AI-driven platform that evaluates consumers in a comprehensive way that goes beyond traditional credit scores. This gives Propel the ability to provide credit access to consumers otherwise locked out of the traditional credit evaluation system.

As they scaled, Propel sought a partner with reliable cross-border bank integrations and a strong Canadian foundation to help power their platform. Flinks was exactly what they were looking for.

Challenges

Better, more reliable integration with banks across Canada and the United States
A partner with strong and long standing Canadian relationships
Quick and easy integration into Propel’s AI-driven fintech platform

Solutions

Flinks Aggregation and Enrichment working together to help power Propel’s credit models and risk assessments
Flinks works well in both Canada and the US, with particularly robust Canadian bank connections
A true partner to work and grow together with Propel as their business needs evolved

Propel faced two major challenges:

The need for a partner with strong and established cross-border banking network
Reliable and trustworthy bank connections to facilitate faster approvals to improve customer experience and enable further credit inclusion

Creating a seamless and speedy credit approval process

One of the primary challenges facing Propel was their desire to make the credit journey easier for their customers. In order to offer a seamless and relatively effortless credit approval process, rather than take a piecemeal approach and work with different vendors, they sought a single source that had solid integrations with banks across North American geographies – particularly in Canada where they were soon to launch. Flinks fit that bill.

Flinks worked with Propel’s team to build these integrations directly into their front and back-end platforms, elevating the user experience and making it easier for customers to apply for the credit they want. With direct bank connections, users seamlessly provide the banking information needed in order for Propel’s subsidiaries to quickly evaluate applications.

This cuts down application processing time and allows Propel and their bank partners to quickly provide funds to qualified applicants directly.

This reliability and ease of use has helped Propel grow not only in the United States, but also powered a successful launch in Canada as well. As Propel continues to grow across Canada, entering more provinces and growing their customer base, Flinks is a key part of that rollout, ensuring the process remains simple and easy for customers and that Propel gets the data and intelligence they need.

You free up your time to focus on what you do well and let Flinks do what they do well.
– Jonathan Goler, Chief Risk Officer at Propel Holdings

Better data, better credit modeling and risk assessment

Breaking into the North American financial industry as an upstart Canadian fintech isn’t easy.

Propel chose to work with Flinks because they needed an experienced partner that would help power their credit and decisioning models with accurate and timely financial data, helping them be competitive in a crowded market.

Beginning with a single Flinks integration within one of their brands, Propel have since gone on to enable Flinks integrations on all streams of their business, on both sides of the border. These integrations include both Flinks Aggregation and Enrichment, a combination that has given Propel data and insights that have helped them build a stronger product and gain deeper insights into their customers.

Flinks’ quality data integrations and analytics feed into Propel’s systems and can be used by their business intelligence and risk teams in building credit models and to model customer behavior. Rather than be beholden to traditional measures such as credit scores, they can instead use their custom attributes to comprehensively evaluate an applicant’s overall financial health and ensure customers are able to repay their loans.

The data gathered through Flinks’ Aggregation and Enrichment products helps Propel subsidiaries shape the way they design products, interact with customers and ultimately, view customer risk.

With our AI and credit models the more data we have, the better decisions we can make. And the products help us by giving us more data. They give us both a macro and micro view of consumer behavior.
– Jonathan Goler, Chief Risk Officer at Propel Holdings

An established and reliable Canadian partner to grow with

In 2022, Propel began to turn their sights onto their home country, Canada. Despite being a Canadian fintech, with headquarters in Toronto, Propel lacked a Canadian product. Having broken through the crowded lender market in the United States with their MoneyKey and CreditFresh brands, Propel launched their Canadian offering Fora Credit in November 2022. Flinks was pivotal to this launch and their continued growth in Canada.

It was important for Propel to work with a partner that had strong Canadian relationships that they could rely on as they made inroads into the Canadian market. Flinks took the lead with Canadian banks, leveraging their experience and relationships to ensure Propel had the integrations needed to successfully launch Fora Credit. This has helped Fora Credit quickly establish itself as a reliable lending solution in Canada.

The partnership between Flinks and Propel has been collaborative from the start. Instead of an off-the-shelf implementation, Flinks and Propel problem-solved together, allowing Flinks to build a product tailored to Propel’s growing needs. By working hand-in-hand with Propel every step of the way, Flinks helped ensure the implementation and go-to-market process in both the United States and Canada was relatively painless for Propel.

Flinks being Canadian was important to us. We are also a Canadian fintech and we think there is value in working with other start-ups in our ecosystem. We wanted to support the home team and we think we get superior service from companies that like us, are growing and competing against US heavyweights.
– Jonathan Goler, Chief Risk Officer at Propel Holdings

Key Takeaways

Integrations can be difficult, Flinks made sure to leverage their expertise and Canadian bank connections to make the process as uncomplicated as possible.
The quality and breadth of data that Flinks provides Propel has helped them improve their credit models and risk assessments.
Choosing an experienced partner with deep and reliable bank connections allowed Propel to focus their efforts on growing in both Canada and the United States.