Want to take a loan from your bank but they don’t want to pass your loan sanction? Don’t have any assets that you can put up as a collateral to get a loan? Worry not as we have provided you with information about an AI platform that offers loan factoring non-traditional variables like your job or education qualification.
Want to learn what this platform is then keep reading this article.
What Is Upstart?
Upstart is a public company based in the US. The company developed an AI platform that partners with banks and credit unions to lend loans to customers calculating non-traditional factors like jobs and education to predict the loan amount.
While traditionally banks provide loans to customers factoring customers assets and tenure of their employment, Upstart offers loans based on not traditional factors.
Uptake offers loan amount based on your job or the average salary a person can get based on their education. This ensure people who are in need of a loan but do not own any assets also get the opportunity to get a loan.
Upstart was founded by Dave Girouard, Paul Gu and Anna Counselman in 2012. The headquarters of Upstart is located in San Mateo in California. This US-based company is estimated to be valued at almost 2 billion dollars.
Dave Girouard was the former President of Google. Anna Counselman was the former Manager at Google’s department of Global Enterprise Customer Programs and Gmail Consumer Operations. Paul Gu was a Thiel Fellow.
As of 2023, Upstart has 1,875 employees.
How Upstart Functions
In the April of 2012, Upstart launched its first product, Income Share Agreement (ISA). ISA offered individuals to loan a percentage of their future income calculated through its platform.
The company moved away from this methodology towards personal loan market in 2014. with this change of method the platform started offering 3-year loan that expanded to 5-year loan product at present.
The company developed an income and a default prediction model that determined the creditworthiness of potential loan buyers. The model took into account traditional as well as non-traditional criterias. While traditional criterias like credit report, income, and FICO score were taken into account.
Non-traditional criterias included educational variables like college you attended, GPA, standardized test scores (SAT), field of study and work history that developed a model determining the borrower’s final capacity. The financial capacity predicts the personal propensity to replay the loan sum to the bank that lets the borrower loan the money.
Funding Of Upstart
Upstart initially raise 1.75 million dollars from its seed round funding from First Round Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Crunchfund, Google Ventures, Mark Cuban, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In Series A funding the company raised 5.9 million dollars from Google Executive Chairman; Eric Schmidt, Khosla Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Founders Fund, Correlation Ventures and Marc Benioff.
In Series C round it raised another 35 million dollars in funding from Third Point Capital in 2015. And in 2017 it raised another 32,5 million from Rakuten.
Finally in 2019 from Series D round it raised 50 million dollars from Progressive Corporation. The company went public through an IPO in late 2020.
Products Of Upstart
Upstart offers two products at present, firstly the personal loans and lastly the car loan refinance. Both this loan processes are simple and will take you 5 minutes to calculate and apply for loan. The loan will be funded as fast as 24 hours.
Car Loan Refinance will save you up to 1,065 dollars from other car loans. In Personal Loans you can take from 1000 dollars to 50,000 dollars without any pre-payment. 36% lower rates than other traditional loan models.
Reviews On Upstart
Here are some of the reviews on Upstart by its users.
Cordy says,
“I love Upstart! I have used them twice now to help consolidate my credit card debt and fund a vacation. Easy payment schedule as well as a reasonable response to hardship situations when you can’t make a payment on time made me feel secure in borrowing from them. I recommend upstart to all my friends and family.”
Craig said
“Upstart was “Fair and quick.” He added further, “They are easy to work with…took just a few minutes. They are fair…didn’t take advantage of subpar credit or charge predatory rates. Will continue to do business with them.”
Abigail says,
“Why haven’t I done this sooner?!?!?” She adds, “This was insanely easy. I checked my Crefit Karma on a Sunday morning, saw the offer, checked my pre-approval rate, and accepted the offer in about 10 minutes. I didn’t have to hunt for or upload any documents. My funds were scheduled to be deposited the next day.”
Jeffrey B says,
“I spent days being reviewed for a loan with another company only to be denied. The entire process for my loan with upstart took less than 10 minutes. Love this process and company.”
CAC said,
“3rd loan with Upstart, simple no BS experience and approval process. Interest rates could be a bit better but they are still reasonable considering the circumstances, they help keep me and family stay afloat in tough times.”
Dianne says,
“I spoke with two different representatives today at upstart and they both were very knowledgeable and very nice. Very easy to deal with. Pleasantly surprised and very happy with upstart.”
Dr. E says,
“Fast service and approval and great service. No hassles and quick deposit of funds. I would highly recommend Upstart if you can afford the interest rate and the monthly payments.”
Stephanie says,
Great customer service!” Adding, “Upstart has been great to work with from the beginning. What I appreciated most was their customer service. When I called up with problems taking a screen shot, the woman on the other end stayed on the phone with me for at least twenty minutes and talked me through how to do it — and was extremely patient with me the whole time. I would definitely recommend this company to others.”
Conclusion
So what are your thoughts about the company? Would you like to use this platform to take future loans or would you go the traditional way of borrowing from banks? Let us know your thoughts about the product Upstart offers.
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