GCI is an Australian-based specialist fixed income and credit investment manager founded by established investors Steven Sher and Gavin Solsky.

The financing has been completed via a special purpose bankruptcy remote structure with Perpetual as the trustee. The capital raise was significantly oversubscribed with strong investor demand attributed to the robust risk/return characteristics of the investment.

GCI Chair Steven Sher said the firm was pleased to help OnDeck realise its vision for third party funding.

“This arrangement ties into GCI’s strategy of delivering great risk return outcomes for investors,” Mr Sher said.

He said GCI continued to see further opportunities in the alternative credit sector given ongoing increases in bank regulation, improvements in technology and the availability of credit data.

“We’re finding a vibrant interest in alternative credit investments whereby investors are stepping in to fund Australian small businesses where the banks are not stepping up,” he said.

“Australian investors are looking beyond shares and real estate as a way to diversify their sources of returns – and as a result, high-net worth individuals are attracted to new models like OnDeck,” Mr Sher said.

OnDeck is a technology-enabled SME lender headquartered in the US that launched its Australian operations in April 2015. The company is focused on giving small businesses access to tailored, on-demand working capital solutions within one business day.

Further demonstrating its growth, OnDeck announced in May a partnership with the Franchise Council of Australia (FCA), the peak body for the franchise sector in Australia. By partnering with the FCA, OnDeck aims to reach the thriving $146 billion franchise sector as a supplier of choice for small business loans.

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The appointment coincides with OnDeck announcing a partnership with the Commercial Asset Finance Brokers Association of Australia, a national peak professional body representing commercial asset finance brokers.

Commenting on the membership, Cameron Poolman, CEO of OnDeck Australia, said “Recognising the integral role brokers play in the SME lending space, CAFBA is the obvious choice for us to build a connection with the industry. As a gold affiliate member, we’ll be able to raise our profile among third party networks and demonstrate our capacity to provide tailored credit offers and strong service to brokers and their clients”.

Mr. Burke joins OnDeck with over 20 years of sales and leadership experience in the banking and financial services industry. Most recently, he held the position of General Manager – Consumer & Commercial Finance at Flexigroup.

“Michael has extensive experience and industry networks across the broker space, which will be a huge asset to OnDeck’s Financial Advisers Program launch this year,” Mr Poolman said.

This is the second senior recruitment by OnDeck this year, reinforcing its intention to achieve a leadership position in the Australian market. In January, OnDeck announced the appointment of ex-Society One executive Jerry Yohananov as Chief Financial Officer.

Mr Poolman said, “From the outset, OnDeck has focused on building a multi-skilled management team from a range of backgrounds, with experience, spanning e-commerce, banking, technology and payments. Michael will add to this diverse team, as well as bringing a wealth of contacts and knowledge from the broker channel.”

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Cameron Poolman

Small business owners are constantly racing against the clock, sacrificing time with friends and family, and even their health, in order to run their business, a new survey has found.

The Take Back Your Time survey, conducted by YouGov and commissioned by small business lender OnDeck, asked 300 small business owners about their time management. It found that many are making sacrifices in order to be their own boss: 40% say they have little social life, 28% say they work long hours and 22% even admit to neglecting their health, diet and fitness.

In fact, nine out of ten business owners (89%) agree that to be a business owner, ‘you have to be exceptional at time management’.

But even so, the business takes a toll on their time, as 1 in 2 believe that work-life balance is an illusion for business owners. This is borne out by their holiday plans: 1 in 5 won’t be taking a break this summer, while a further 1 in 4 will take only the public holidays or a few days off.

“There are many rewarding things about running your own business,” said Cameron Poolman, CEO of OnDeck, “However, there are downsides as well. Long hours, red tape and lots of paperwork mean that many don’t feel like they have time to develop their business.”

In fact, 1 in 2 business owners wish they had more time to spend on growing their business, and the bigger the business, the harder it is: 62% of owners with more than $100K annual revenue face this challenge.

One of the areas which suffers because of the time-crunch, is accessing funding for the business.

“It’s unsurprising that applying to banks for a business loan is low on the priority list for many. Research by OnDeck’s partner MYOB has found that it takes on average 20 hours to apply for a loan* – time that many small businesses just don’t have.

“Since OnDeck launched in Australia a year ago, I’ve been meeting our customers every week. The feedback about our application process is that it’s much faster and easier than with traditional lenders. They’re pleasantly surprised that there is another way to access funding that doesn’t require an armful of paperwork and a long wait to hear back,” Mr Poolman said

The survey also found that administration is the biggest drain on the time of small business owners – cited by 47% as a top time-sink.

“Small business owners want to spend more time with the people they care about, but administration eats into that time significantly.

“Therefore, anything we can do to reduce that burden is good for small business. Whether it’s the government cutting red tape or making funding fast and easy, there are plenty of ways we can support the people who create around 70% of employment in this country,” Mr Poolman said.

Asked what they would do given another 20 hours of time, small business owners were clear about their priorities: the most popular option is to spend it with friends and family (40%), followed by taking a holiday (19%). Some would pursue a hobby (12%) or invest the time in the business (8%); however, others were stumped by the question, with 13% unsure.

Notes: Research for MYOB undertaken in August 2015 by Gundabluey found that the average time taken to apply for a small business loan was 20 hours

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Australia is OnDeck’s first market outside North America. In expanding to Australia, OnDeck has partnered with MYOB – Australia’s leading business accounting software provider – and a group of prominent Australian technology investors including Andrew Bassat and Jason Lenga (Seek), Gavin Solsky (Healthshare) and Cameron Poolman (Graysonline). Mr. Poolman will be CEO of OnDeck’s Australian business.

As part of the arrangements, MYOB will provide valuable local expertise and make the OnDeck solution available to its approximately one million business users across Australia.

OnDeck is a technology-enabled small business lender that can evaluate, approve and fund small business loans as fast as the same day. Headquartered in New York City, the company has originated more than $2 billion (USD) in loans to small businesses in more than 700 industries across all 50 U.S. states and Canada.

OnDeck uses advanced lending technology and analytics to assess creditworthiness based on actual operating performance and not solely on the owner’s personal credit. OnDeck’s proprietary small business credit scoring system, the OnDeck Score®, utilises more than 100 external data sources and 2,000 data points per loan application and leverages a database of more than 10 million small businesses.

OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow said, “Australia represents an exciting growth opportunity. Similar to the U.S. market, in Australia we see a huge gap between small business financing needs and the availability of capital from traditional sources. There is significant unmet small business lending demand in Australia, and we believe our online platform is well suited to address the capital needs of Australian small businesses.”

The OnDeck solution aims to answer a key challenge facing Australian small businesses: the ability to access working capital quickly and easily.

“U.S. small business owners have embraced the OnDeck model. We think OnDeck will prove to be the game-changer Australia needs to give its hard working small business community a resource to help owners reach their full business potential,” Mr. Poolman said.

MYOB CEO Tim Reed said, “We have closely followed OnDeck’s success in the U.S. and are excited to bring their financing solutions not only to our customers but to the entire small business market in Australia. Our partnership with OnDeck is the latest step in our ongoing journey to making business life easier. Building on our successful cloud based solutions, and partnering directly with other pioneering organisations such as OnDeck, we will ensure tight integration with MYOB products such that we offer a truly connected service. This is all underpinned by significant and successful R&D investments in cloud based platforms.”

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