Sorry ... Page Not Found
I'm sorry, but the page you're looking for could not be found. Below are our most recent articles. Perhaps you'll find what you're looking for there.
Maxim Commercial Capital Grew Team by 21% during 2025
LOS ANGELES, CALIF. (Jan. 20, 2026) – Maxim Commercial Capital (“Maxim”) announced the addition of Lyndon Elam as Chief Operating Officer and Donald Cosenza as SVP of Business Development while steadily navigating the volatile economy during 2025. Maxim fuels small businesses and entrepreneurship nationwide in underserved market segments by providing loans and leases from $10,000 to $3 million collateralized by over-the-road trucks, trailers, construction and agricultural heavy equipment, and real estate.
“We began 2025 with an aggressive plan to invest in our most valuable asset, our people, and we are pleased to announce the expansion of our executive and operating teams,” said Michael Kianmahd, Maxim’s CEO. “Both Lyn and Don have tremendous experience, exceptional energy, and strong leadership skills to help propel Maxim into 2026 and beyond. We also expanded our operations and accounting teams with skilled, growth-minded talent to support our vision to be the nation’s preeminent alternative lender to small and mid-sized businesses.”
Founded during the 2008 financial crisis, the privately-owned lender remained a reliable funding source for small and mid-sized businesses through 2025’s market turbulence caused by shifting interest rates, an economic slowdown, disruption in the trucking markets, and tariffs. Keys to Maxim’s success over its 17 year history include its steadfast commitment to funding non-prime customers, including startups and those with challenged credit; serving as a reliable funding source for its referral network of equipment vendors and finance brokers; and offering creative funding solutions, such as no cash down transactions where the business may pledge excess equipment or real estate as collateral.
Creatively structured financings during the year included 100% purchase financing for a 20-year-old waste management company in New York with four trucks, and a pending $1.0MM contract, to purchase a $200K 2022 Isuzu FTR Diamond Truck outfitted for trash bin cleaning secured by a first lien on the newly purchased truck and the business owners’ home; a $110K real estate secured term loan to refinance $99K in high-rate MCA loans for the experienced owner of a stone and garden retail store and landscaping business, reducing the borrower’s debt service by $2,400 per month; and a $42K title loan on a 2020 Peterbilt 567 Cement Mixer for an experienced contractor to fund repairs on a Class 8 Day Cab purchased at auction.
Class 8 truck financings during the year comprised loans and leases for experienced and startup owner operators in 41 states across the U.S. Representative fundings included: a $52K 2021 Peterbilt 579 with 514K miles for 25% down for an owner operator with less than two years’ time-in-business, 725 FICO, and charged off credit cards; an affordable $29K 2018 Freightliner Cascadia 125 with 560K miles for 25% down for an experienced owner operator with a 704 FICO and late mortgage payments; and a $42K 2020 Freightliner Cascadia 126 replacement truck for 25% down for an existing customer with a 542 FICO, late on auto payments, and collection accounts on credit cards who had totaled his previous truck.
“We are looking forward to deploying new credit guidelines in early 2026,” noted Elam. “Our committed team is eager to offer a broader and deeper credit spectrum across heavy equipment verticals to benefit borrowers and our vendor and finance broker referral partners.”
About Maxim Commercial Capital
Maxim Commercial Capital is redefining access to capital for underserved small and mid-sized business owners nationwide, helping them unlock growth opportunities and fueling their dreams of entrepreneurship by providing essential loans and leases (“financing”) from $10,000 to $3 million secured by heavy equipment, real estate, trucks, and trailers. The company funds equipment purchase financings and leases, working capital, and debt consolidations. Maxim’s more creative financing structures leverage equity in real estate and owned heavy equipment to facilitate growth and preserve customers’ cash. As a leading provider of transportation equipment financing, Maxim supports startup and experienced owner-operators and non-CDL small fleet owners with financing for class 8 and class 6 trucks, trailers, and reefers. Learn more at www.maximcc.com or by calling 877-776-2946.
###
Contact:
Michael Kianmahd, CEO
Maxim Commercial Capital
(213) 984-2727
View PostNMEF Reports $1.8 Billion in 2025 Originations Doubling Assets Under Management
JANUARY 20, 2026, NORWALK, CT – North Mill Equipment Finance LLC (“NMEF”), an independent commercial equipment lender and lessor headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, reported $1.8 billion in total originations for 2025, including syndicated volume of $566 million. The record originations resulted in a doubling of assets under management to $2.4 billion.
Full-year record originations were driven by a series of targeted strategic actions, including the acquisition of Pawnee Leasing, the purchase of the Midland Equipment Finance portfolio, and the origination and syndication of assets through a joint venture with Oaktree Capital Management focusing on Fair Market Value (FMV) leases.
“2025 demonstrated the durability and scalability of our platform,” said David Lee, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NMEF. “We continued to diversify origination sources, deepen our FMV and syndication capabilities, and integrated strategic acquisitions, all while maintaining disciplined underwriting and operational rigor. NMEF was able to execute on these transactions with speed, structural creativity, and offering certainty of close, reinforcing its position as a flexible and reliable capital partner”
“Syndication activity was a significant contributor to 2025 results, with approximately $566 million syndicated across multiple initiatives.” added Mark Bonanno, President and Chief Revenue Officer “Our syndication strategy is designed to deliver consistent execution and alignment for our partners. By combining origination expertise with thoughtful risk distribution, we’re able to support larger transactions, move with speed and certainty, and create durable value across the capital structure.”
According to Tom Lyle, Chief Operating Officer, “Operationally, 2025 was defined by execution. We integrated acquisitions, optimized portfolios, and scaled infrastructure in line with a clear operating plan. The consistency of that execution underpinned both the doubling of assets under management and a record year for NMEF.”
Looking ahead, NMEF stated it will remain focused on disciplined growth, portfolio quality, and continued investment in scalable platforms to support long-term expansion.
About NMEF
NMEF is a premier lender working with third-party referral sources to finance small to mid-ticket equipment commercial leases and loans ranging from $15,000 to $3,000,000 and up to $5,000,000 for investment grade opportunities. NMEF accepts A – C credit qualities and finances transactions for many asset categories, including medical, construction, franchise, technology, vocational, manufacturing, and material handling equipment. NMEF is majority owned by an affiliate of InterVest Capital Partners and is headquartered in Norwalk, CT, with regional offices in Irvine, CA, Fort Collins, CO, Plymouth, MN, Voorhees NJ, and Murray, UT. One of NMEF’s controlled affiliates, BriteCap Financial LLC, is a leading non-bank lender providing small businesses with fast, convenient financing alternatives such as working capital loans since 2003 from its main office in Las Vegas, NV. For more information, visit www.nmef.com and www.britecap.com.
View PostFintech Small Business Lender Origination Volume Snapshot
It was full speed ahead in 2025. Here’s how the origination volume stats were trending among the biggest fintech small business lenders for the first nine months of last year.
| Lender | First Three Quarters 2025 | All of 2024 |
| Square Loans | $5 billion | $5.7 billion |
| BHG Financial | $4.4 billion | $3.7 billion |
| Enova | $4 billion | $3.98 billion |
| Shopify Capital | $2.8 billion | $3 billion |
| PayPal | $1.6 billion | $3 billion |
deBanked tracks fintech small business lenders that publicly report (or privately report to us) their origination volumes. Square Loans became the largest in 2021 and has held on to the top spot ever since. Their advantage (and limitation) is that they lend only to merchants in their POS payments ecosystem.
A dark horse not listed, because precise origination volumes are not available, is Parafin, an embedded lender that works through partnerships with DoorDash, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok and more. At last report, the company said it had made more than $14 billion in offers.
View PostHeron Expands into SMB Credit Broker Market with Full Deal Flow Automation
New York, NY – January 2026 – Heron Data, an AI platform that helps fintechs automate document-heavy workflows, today announced its expansion into the SMB credit broker market with the launch of Heron Broker Suite — an end-to-end solution that automates the entire broker deal flow from application intake to CRM.
The launch marks Heron’s entry into a market where manual work has long been the standard. Leading brokerages including Big Think Capital and TFS Financial are already using Heron Broker Suite in production, reporting processing cost reductions of up to 80%, offer-to-rep response times under 60 seconds, and teams refocused from data entry to revenue-generating work.
The Challenge
For most brokers, the daily workflow is manual and repetitive: scrub bank statements, match deals to funders, fill out portals, then dig through hundreds of emails to find approvals. The workload adds up fast:
- 5-20 minutes per application on bank statement scrubbing and light underwriting
- 10-15 minutes to match each deal to lenders based on internal policies
- 3-5 minutes per funder portal × 50+ submissions per day
- Hundreds of decision emails daily — approvals buried alongside declines, spam, and stips
Most brokerages spend $10K-$20K/month on offshore or data entry teams just to keep up — and even then, deals slip through the cracks, growth stalls without adding more headcount, margins shrink, and top performers burn out on doing data entry.
The Solution
Heron Broker Suite automates the entire workflow in four steps:
| 1. Scrub Bank Statements → Extracts revenue, positions, NSFs, and fraud signals in seconds |
| 2. Smart Lender Matching → Routes each deal to the right funders based on broker-defined criteria |
| 3. Auto-Fill Funder Portals → Submits applications via portal, email, or API — however each funder requires |
| 4. Process Funder Offers → Reads decision emails and syncs approvals, declines, and pending status to CRM instantly |
The moment a funder responds, reps see it. What used to take all day now happens in minutes — faster responses, more deals closed, and a business that scales without adding headcount.
The Impact
Brokers using Heron are seeing immediate, measurable results:
- Up to 80% reduction in processing costs
- Offer-to-rep response in seconds, not hours
- Zero missed approvals — every decision synced automatically
- 2-3x volume capacity with the same team
- Teams refocused on deal strategy and lender relationships
Big Think Capital, a high-volume New York brokerage managing over 5,000 decision emails per day, cut offer-to-rep response time by 98% — from over 30 minutes to under 60 seconds.
“The first broker to get the best approval is the one that’s going to win the deal. If you’re not able to use AI to automate manual workflows, you’ll end up falling further and further behind your competition.”
— Chris Forsberg, VP of Operations, Big Think Capital
TFS Financial automated over 4,000 monthly decisions — eliminating the equivalent of two full-time employees’ worth of manual data entry.
“Rather than uploading decisions all day, my team can now focus on making sure the right applications get to the right lenders — and that we’re getting approvals back faster for our customers.”
— Sydney Stewart, Manager of Broker Desk, TFS Financial
Heron’s Expansion into the Broker Market
Heron has spent years helping funders and fintechs automate bank statement analysis and underwriting workflows, processing over 500,000 files per week for more than 150 customers.
Brokers face the same challenge on the other side of the deal — and now have access to the same automation.
“Brokers didn’t build their businesses to fill out portals and babysit inboxes. They built them to help small businesses get funded. We’re giving them their time back.”
— Johannes Jaeckle, CEO, Heron Data
Heron Broker Suite is built for fast growing brokerages looking to scale with AI from day one—turning automation into a competitive advantage as they grow. Every Heron product is designed to keep humans in control, so teams stay focused on the work they do best.
Moreover, Heron integrates directly into existing workflows and broker systems—including Salesforce, CloudSquare, LendSaaS, and more—so brokerages can automate operations without disrupting how they work today.
With this expansion into the broker market, Heron expects to help brokers reclaim thousands of hours each year—transforming what was once an operational bottleneck into an advantage.
About Heron Data
Heron Data is an AI solution that eliminates repetitive, manual work in lending, insurance, and finance. The company processes over 500,000 files per week for more than 150 customers, including FDIC-insured banks and leading insurance companies. Heron raised $16.5M in Series A funding in 2025, led by Insight Partners with participation from Y Combinator.
Learn more at herondata.io
View PostHow a Mother-Daughter Broker Shop Persevered and is Positioned for Growth
Sharpe Capital facilitated nearly $5 million in funding to small businesses across the United States in 2025. Next year, they hope to double it. What makes the company unique is that it operates as a mother-daughter team, one of the very few in the industry to be structured that way. But how Wendy Rivera and her mother, Sonia Alvelo, got there is a story of circumstances and perseverance.
Alvelo is a known entrepreneur in the space through her own small business finance brokerage Latin Financial, but technically she was also associated with another brokerage at the same time, Sharpe Capital. Her business partner and life partner, Brendan Lynch, co-founded Sharpe with her more than a decade ago, but Lynch primarily ran Sharpe while Alvelo ran Latin, sister companies of sorts but with separate operations. The two celebrated a grand opening of a big joint office in Wethersfield, CT in 2022, which was attended by deBanked and a slate of local politicians. The Sharpe team wore green shirts and the Latin team wore blue.
Sadly, Lynch passed away in December 2024 from cancer at only 45 years old, but not before he could finally tie the knot with Alvelo, making her known as Alvelo-Lynch once and for all. Lynch’s last interview with deBanked happened four months before he passed and one of his final messages he had hoped to get out through us was a reminder for people to remember to take care of their health.
In the challenging time afterward, Alvelo took the reins of Sharpe and eventually her daughter, Wendy Rivera, emerged as a key reason the company continues to be successful.
Rivera, Connecticut-born and raised, had originally been working in retail when she became curious about her mother’s and Lynch’s business in 2018. When working for them became a possible next step for Rivera, they didn’t give in to nepotism and made her interview as a candidate just like anyone else. But she turned it around on them.
“They would tell you that I interviewed them in regards to what the company was and everything like that, but I asked the right questions,” Rivera told deBanked. “Everything was moving smoothly, and I decided to move forward.”
It started off as a part-time gig and eventually became full-time. Her role was to bring in deals and work closely under the tutelage of Lynch, who had a natural knack for connecting with people, particularly small business owners.
“They had a special place for him in their hearts,” Rivera said. “Brendan has taught me so much. He pretty much taught me this industry. I’ve worked with him side by side for the past seven-plus years.”
Rivera obviously learned from her mother as well, but Alvelo’s typical Latin Financial client was primarily from within the Spanish-speaking community while Sharpe’s was much more broad. To give some perspective on that, Alvelo, for example, says that today 80% of her entire Latin Financial customer base resides in Puerto Rico.
So Rivera spent her time on Sharpe and now she’s the primary person responsible for its operations. In what was a transitional year fraught with grief and challenges, the two revamped everything to focus on efficiency. Now they’re finally getting back to thinking about how to expand.
Along the way, Rivera realized that relationships in this business have a tremendous impact and can serve as its own form of marketing.
“Honestly, what’s been working for us is word of mouth,” Rivera said when it comes to acquiring customers. “Really. It sounds very old school but it really works. Once you take care of one merchant, they’ll tell their friends or whoever the case may be, and then they’ll reach out to us, and it just keeps growing that way.”
But those referrals wouldn’t come if they didn’t have the right funders in place to help them out. That means they have to know and trust who they are doing business with on the other side. Coincidentally, attending deBanked events, which Rivera has done, has been an eye-opening experience for her in getting to see who they are working with.
“I feel like once you actually meet the person, I don’t even think a phone call will do enough, you get a feel for what kind of person they are, and if they are in the industry for the right reasons,” Rivera said.
And in all those meetings, another thing she’s realized is that being part of a purely mother-daughter team is unique even within the family business segment of the industry which tends to lean toward father-son. But the two talk business just like any other shop: during work, after work, even during dinner they talk about deals.
Though it’s been a lot and Rivera says she’s overdue for a vacation, she says it’s a job she really enjoys.
“If you love numbers, if you love people, if you love helping people, I think it’s definitely a great position to be in,” Rivera said of working in the industry. “But you have to also be in love with the job as well. Because if you’re not in love with it, there’s going to be a lot of things that’ll hold you back.”
The motivation now is just to pick back up and have an even bigger 2026.
“Brendan and my mom had different ways of running their companies, Sharpe and Latin Financial, and so I feel like [Brendan] kind of taught me his kind of ways for Sharpe Capital and also maybe leaving an open door for opportunities down the road as well,” Rivera said. “And now that I’m in that spot, I can see that.”
View PostNew Jersey Reintroduces APR Disclosure Bill for Commercial Financing
A commercial financing APR disclosure bill was introduced in the New Jersey State Senate on Tuesday. The bill is mostly templated from other state legislation in which estimated APR disclosures on sales-based financing transactions would be determinable by using either the Historical method or Opt-in method. Senator Troy Singleton introduced it as Senate Bill 1760 and it is described as a bill that “requires certain disclosures by providers of commercial financing.” It can be viewed here.
View PostCalifornia Partnered With a Revenue Based Financing Provider
On the California Small Business Loan Match website operated by The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank (IBank), is a list of vetted partner small business lenders that the state guarantees loans for. One of those lenders is AltCap California which actually offers revenue based financing.
At face value, AltCap describes the cost of its revenue based financing as having to pay up to 7.5% of monthly revenue with a total cost of 1.4x to 1.5x. Its multi-part video education series describes revenue based financing costs as working in the following way:
Repayment Cap: Multiple of the total loan amount used to calculate the set dollar amount to be repaid. (Total Cost of Capital)
Repayment Rate: Share of revenue taken to repay the loan. (Holdback %)
It reinforces this in its Case Study example of Juice Boost (the 2nd video) where it explains that the metrics used to calculate the cost of Revenue Based Financing are the Repayment Cap (factor rate) and Repayment Rate (holdback %).
In its final video, the 4th video, it tells borrowers to inquire about APRs to make comparisons against companies like Square, Amazon, Stripe, and Shopify.
“Revenue-Based Financing allows small businesses to raise funds by pledging a percentage of future, ongoing revenues in exchange for capital provided by a lender,” the website says. “Revenue-Based Financing is different than debt financing. Interest is not paid on an outstanding loan balance and there are no fixed payments. Instead, payments are proportional to a firm’s performance, offering a flexible, patient source of financing.”
View PostFactor Gives Update on “Killing MCAs” in Texas
Cole Harmonson, CEO of Dare Capital and a board member for the American Factoring Association, posted an update last month on the recent Texas MCA legislation and campaign to “fight the MCA cronies.” It appeared on the Commercial Factor’s magazine website. You can read it here.
Harmonson shared his strategy on how to kill MCAs in Texas, which focuses mainly on the DACA component of securing a first position: “If you get the Springing DACA, then the bank will not give anyone else (i.e., an MCA) a DACA, and therefore no MCA can legally sweep your customer’s account, thereby killing the MCAs in Texas,” he wrote.
Harmonson had previously shared that the factoring industry had been responsible for the MCA legislation in Texas and that it served as a “blueprint,” suggesting that a similar legal framework could be attempted in other states.
View Post
