Even Financial raises $25 million to connect banks with channel partners

Even Financial, a four-year-old New York-based provider of APIs for financial services search, acquisition, and monetization, today announced that it’s raised $25 million in a strategic round of investment co-led by Citi Ventures and MassMutual Ventures, with additional participation from LendingClub. Existing backers American Express Ventures, Canaan Partners, F-Prime Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, and Goldman Sachs also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total raised to $50 million.

Founder and CEO Phill Rosen said the proceeds will accelerate Even Financial’s efforts to grow its network of partners, bolster its product offering, and scale its operations. He anticipates that Even Financial will expand into additional financial services verticals in the coming months as it adds products addressing mortgage, insurance, and student loan marketplaces.

The raise caps off an impressive growth year for Even Financial, which saw its partner network grow by 250% and its headcount triple with hires from JPMorgan Chase, Visa, Turner, Google, Taboola, Criteo, and DoubleClick. According to Rosen, the startup’s solutions have already been adopted by brands like American Express, Goldman Sachs, SoFi, TransUnion, The Penny Hoarder, Credit Sesame, Money Under 30, and Empower.

“At Even, we believe the future of financial services acquisition is native, programmatic, and highly personalized,” said Rosen. “This strategic funding will allow us to execute our vision [to] continue to build the definitive search, comparison, and recommendation engine for financial services.”

For the uninitiated, Even Financial connects financial institutions with channel partners via its APIs, which turn touchpoints into “programmatic acquisition” sources compliant across loans, savings, credit cards, and more. Institutions get access to millions of potential consumers through native integrations boasting programmatic purchasing, machine learning, and data to support decisioning, while partners get turn-key integrations across loans, savings, credit cards, and more. As for consumers, they gain financial product search and comparison tools driven by Even Financial’s recommendation engine.

Even Financial’s extensive toolset provides partners with real-time preapprovals and quotes, leveraging a historical data set to predict what products are most likely to convert. And its white-labeled widgets —  which require just three lines of JavaScript code — tap into a backend that scales across channels and hundreds of partners.

To date, Even Financial says it’s fielded over $200 billion in consumer applications and originated more than 30 million consumer profiles. It claims it now processes hundreds of thousands of applications monthly.

“Just as ITA’s software transformed how consumers find and book travel and DoubleClick’s exchange changed the way publishers and brands buy and sell ads, Even’s platform is revolutionizing how financial institutions find and connect with consumers,” said Citi Ventures managing director of venture investing Luis Valdich, who plans to join Even Financial’s board of directors. “We’re thrilled to partner with Phill and the Even team to support their next phase of growth.”

Lending Club CFO Tom Casey added, “We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this financing round as we deepen our partnership with this innovative fintech provider. Even’s industry-leading API enables us to leverage our scale as America’s largest provider of personal loans and connect with multiple partners as we strive to improve the financial health of more borrowers.”