Blockchain fintech Figure is rumored to be raising $100 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion according to Bloomberg. It offers real estate-related loans. This month the company expects to originate $80 million in finance, up from $59 million in April. Figure’s CEO Mike Cagney, previously co-founded SoFi, known for refinancing student loans. SoFI raised $2 billion while Cagney was CEO, including $1 billion from SoftBank.
To date, Figure has already raised $130 million, after a $65 million Series B in February and currently has 160 employees.
The company has a heavyweight board of advisors including former SEC chairman, Arthur Levitt, former FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, former Digital Asset CEO Blythe Masters, Global Atlantic CIO Anup Agarwal and Andy Sandler, founder of Buckley Sandler.
Figure describes itself as creating “innovative consumer financial solutions for home improvement, debt consolidation and retirement.”
Building quickly
In terms of products it has its own blockchain and has two consumer-facing loan offerings. It developed and spun out the Provenance blockchain network. The new company raised another $20 million in a security token offering. Figure owns the majority of the tokens.
The plan is for other companies to use the Provenance blockchain for loan origination, not just Figure. Provenance will be used to originate loans, to receive loan payments, to buy and sell loans in the secondary market, to finance loans and to securitize loans.
But Figure didn’t just deploy a third-party blockchain technology. They developed their own public, permissioned, proof of stake blockchain. It is permissioned to comply with Know Your Client (KYC) and anti-money laundering rules. We previously uncovered some details.
In August Cagney tweeted that Provenance’s tokens sold for 15 cents giving an implied market capitalization of $15 billion.
First open auction of Hash on Provenance (https://t.co/DFrgHAfRv7). $0.15 clearing price ($15 billion implied market cap). Great to see pricing transparency outside of a centralized exchange. #blockchain #fintech pic.twitter.com/KacgpHw2oV
— Mike Cagney (@mcagney) August 2, 2019
Plus the startup has two consumer-targeted products. One is a home equity line of credit (HELOC) enabling home owners to take out an additional loan on their house. Its unique selling point is five-minute approval and funding in five days.
The second product is a Home Lease Back. It’s like a reverse mortgage, but instead of targeting the retired with a high minimum age limit, Figure’s offering doesn’t have those age requirements.
RPM Ventures and “partners at” DST Global led the Series B financing round. Other investors included Ribbit Capital, DCM, DCG, Nimble Ventures, Morgan Creek. And in May Figure secured a $1 billion uncommitted asset-based financing facility from Jefferies and WSFS Institutional Services.
At the time, Brian McGrath, head of the Securitized Markets Group at Jefferies commented that it had already participated in financing on Provenance. He said: “We’ve gained full transparency into the underlying assets, real-time access to loan performance and the process of accepting collateral has less friction than off-chain.”
