In a center piece article of the Wall Street Journal Franchising section, SBSS was recently covered in “Loans Are Flowing Again, But Not to All Sectors” regarding Franchise Financing. Below are some of the article’s most significant quotes explaining why knowing your small business score is important for the business loan application and approval process both for the borrower and the lender.

See the full article here

Local and regional lenders need leads, too, and they sought to find them at BoeFly’s Franchise Lending Spotlight in Houston. 

For local and regional lenders in the Houston area, it was a good place to, simply put, “get leads,” said Larry Kilgore of American National Bank of Texas, while attending BoeFly’s Franchise Lending Spotlight in Houston last month.

“We need leads for deals. That’s why we’re here,” said Kilgore, whose bank focuses on financing businesses in north and east Texas. “There’s always a gap between your own sources of networking, and you have to fill those with more leads.”

BoeFly, an online source that matches up franchisee financing packages with local and regional lenders, has held previous Franchise Lending Spotlight events in other cities, such as Atlanta and Boston. Franchisor executives give a quick presentation to the group of lenders on their brand and their growth prospects. The goal is to educate the lenders on the franchise concept, so there is comfort when the brand’s franchisee prospect knocks on the bank’s door for funding.  In Houston, about 11 brands were featured in front of some 120 attendees, many of those being representatives from banks, said Mike Rozman, co-president and founder of BoeFly.

Mike Rozman joins Jim Blasingame to talk about how his company uses an Internet platform to help small business owners become more knowledgeable about their chance of getting a bank loan.

“We view this [Bqual] as an educational tool to allow the small business owner to be smarter,” said Mike Rozman, Co-President of BoeFly. Jim Blasingame, The Small Business Advocate,  chimed in and said, “And I didn’t realize you could actually get this, so congratulations  on making this available. For the first time, we can kind of lift the hood of all this credit scoring mystique, this mystery that is out there and see what the banks are considering because most banks won’t tell you what the credit scoring elements are.”

Within the small business realm the hope is that borrowers can become more  educated before starting down the small business financing path.

Listen to the full interview here

“We built bQual to address the questions we’ve heard from some of the thousands of business owners that have used BoeFly since we launched in March of 2010 — “Can I get real-time information and insight before I start the search for financing,” said Mike Rozman, co-president of BoeFly. “With the help of FICO and Equifax we’re solving a long pressing issue in the small business community.”

“One of the keys to success for small businesses is being able to obtain credit quickly and at favorable terms,” said David Vonk, vice president at FICO. “Since we launched our small-business scoring program in 1993, we have seen the tremendous benefits it can bring, helping small businesses get credit faster and with less paperwork. BoeFly’s bQual takes this to the next step: helping business owners understand how lenders see them, just as we provide credit scores and information to consumers through myFICO.com and the FICO Score Open Access program. This is a major advance for American businesses.”

Watch Coleman Report video discussing bQualtm here

BoeFly, the premier online marketplace connecting small business borrowers with lenders and a strategic ally of the International Franchise Association (IFA) today announced that its 2014 Texas Franchise Lending Spotlight Conference will take place on February 5 at the Westin Galleria in Houston, TX.

A recent survey of lenders across the country found that 97.6 percent of respondents think it is important for franchise brands to provide information to help banks evaluate financing requests from franchisees, which could in turn positively impact credit access for franchise business owners.

“Lenders who are well informed about a franchise brand are more likely to fund its franchisees, and we’ve developed this event in response to requests from franchise brands that are expanding in the Southwest and want to substantively educate bankers,” said Mike Rozman, co-president of BoeFly, the company producing the conference. “This is the fourth Franchise Lending Spotlight Conference to date and we look forward to continuing to bring this event to other markets across the country.”

The franchise brands presenting to lenders at the conference will include Bojangles’, Burger 21, Captain D’s, Del Taco, Firehouse Subs, Hurricane Grill and Wings, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Martinizing Dry Cleaning, McAlister’s Deli, Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake Pizza, and Planet Fitness.

Read the full article here