“BoeFly aims to finance the masses“ by Beth Ewen, Franchise Times

As franchisors and bankers rush to court the multi-unit operators of the Grade A brands, who´s left behind? The regular person, interested in a lesser-known franchise, who would like to own a business but more often than not can´t get a loan. BoeFly´s founders want to help, one unit at a time. But can they make a difference in a bigger-is-better world?

Every time we hear about that closed loan, we’re ringing the bells. It’s exciting,” says Nayor, BoeFly’s soft-spoken chief operating officer who used to trade equity options for a living, moving millions of dollars a day for a bank’s prominent private clients, but he was ultimately unsatisfied.

“Although it was the glitz and glamour of Wall Street, it became apparent to me I wasn’t producing anything,” Nayor says, something that came to bother him over time. He’s 38, the same age as the surprise winner of this year’s Boston Marathon, he offers in an interview the same week as the race. A long-distance runner himself, he prefers concrete results. “Seeing the expansion of a business or getting a business off the ground—trading is intangible. Small businesses are tangible.”

Tangible, yes, and also tedious, to hold the conferences, make the introductions, qualify the prospects, submit the applications, evaluate the financials, one by one by one. BoeFly aims to speed up the process, with its original online marketplace and now with a new trademarked tool called bQual. Their real mission is to get financing to the masses.

Read the Full Article at Franchise Times:  http://www.franchisetimes.com/September-2014/BoeFly-aims-to-finance-the-masses/

BoeFly and the new business credit score program; bQual were recently featured in an Huffington Post: Small Business article by Jerry Chautin discussing the SBA’s new credit score model.

On June 6^th, 2014 U.S. SBA Administrator; Maria Contreras-Sweet removed the federal underwriting requirements for small business loans of $350,000 or less.

This is a huge step in a favorable direction for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking for smaller loan amounts need to start or expand their business.

As quoted in the Huffington Post, Contreras-Sweet states “SBA’s total credit score will make it easier and less time-intensive for banks to do business with the SBA.”

Mike Rozman; Co-President of BoeFly was also quoted in the article regarding BoeFly’s new program bQual, which allows small business owners to know their business credit score before applying for financing.

Read the full article here: Less Hassle: You Can Borrow $5,000 to $350,000 Based Upon a New Credit-Scoring Model

BoeFly was recently mentioned in the Small Business section of the Bloomberg Business Week, as a prime source for business owners, loans brokers, and commercial lenders to match up for business financing.

BoeFly, the online marketplace for business loans, helps connect loan brokers such as Michael Cordero of Cordero Capital Partners with business owners like the siblings featured in the ‘Advice on Refinancing Debt for a 127-Year-Old Business’ article who struggle to find flexible financing through traditional funding sources.

Since BoeFly Allows business owners to expand the lender audience their loan goes out to, they are able to shop rates and terms that are flexible to their needs.

In a recent IFA publication  “CAN MY Franchisees GET FINANCED?”, regarding solutions that Franchisors can use when jumping over hurdles to obtain financing for their franchise prospects., BoeFly is highlighted as a financing platform that makes franchise financing easier than ever.

The Franchising World Article States:

“Companies such as BoeFly and the loan professionals mentioned above are great venues through which to disseminate your franchisees’ financing needs to a wide group of lenders.”

Read the Full Article Here for more tips on how to achieve the best financing options for your franchisees.

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