Figure Technology Solutions, the parent company of Figure Lending LLC, has launched a blockchain-based marketplace to connect buyers and sellers of private credit loans, promising to reduce settlement timelines and create greater pricing certainty.
The launch, announced on Wednesday, comes less than two months after Figure named tech veteran Michael Tannenbaum — who led fintech company Brex for seven years — as its new CEO. Tannenbaum replaced founder Mike Cagney, who continues to serve as executive chairman.
The new platform, Figure Connect, allows originators to “receive forward commitments from buyers, lock active bids, control loan pricing to balance profitability and volume, and deliver pools of loans into those commitments,” the company explained in a news release. It’s integrated into Figure’s loan ecosystem and is available to all participants.
Based on Provenance Blockchain, the platform offers common and standardized key characteristics of loan pools and sale terms, reducing the typical settlement process from months to days, Figure stated.
Tannenbaum said the platform creates “the first highly liquid private capital marketplace for loans” and offers “unique certainty of funding” to originators and “standardization to loan buyers.”
Initial partners include The Loan Store, Movement Mortgage, Bayview Asset Management and Saluda Grade.
In early April, Figure announced the rollout of its Digital Asset Registration Technologies (DART) platform, which was made available to private and wholesale lending partners. DART is a mortgage processing product designed to offer the industry an alternative to offerings from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS).
In March, the company took a step toward becoming public by submitting a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding a proposed initial public offering of its equity securities.
