Lenders Cooperative & Ventures Lending Technologies Announce Transformative Merger, Creating a Powerful End-to-End Lending and Servicing Platform
Lenders Cooperative and Ventures Lending Technologies today announced their intent to merge, creating an entity that will deliver best-in-class commercial loan origination and integrated commercial loan servicing capabilities to a wide range of financial institutions.
By bringing together the loan originations expertise of Lenders Cooperative and the servicing capabilities of Ventures Lending Technologies, this merger sets the stage for the combined organization to become the premier technology company offering loan solutions and shared services for commercial banks, credit unions, Certified Development Companies (CDCs), Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and other fintech companies providing commercial and government guaranteed loans to their local businesses and communities.
“Our banking partners that leverage our commercial loan origination technology have continued to seek a modern servicing platform to deliver a true end to end experience from originations through servicing,” said Cary Cooper, Chief Executive Officer of Lenders Cooperative. “This merger will allow us to deliver a unique solution that is highly sought out by the market – while also helping modernize and drive down the cost of servicing technology.”
Lenders Cooperative will bolster these combined lending technologies with unparalleled professional services support, including credit underwriting, closing, and servicing operations, working directly on behalf of the lending institutions.
The merger builds on a strategic collaboration that began in 2023 between Lenders Cooperative and Momentus Capital to explore technology enhancements and lead-generation opportunities.
“Our teams have worked closely together to create innovative solutions to help Momentus Capital reach more borrowers, more efficiently. The teamwork and collaboration have been excellent,” said Ellis Carr, President and CEO of CDC Small Business Finance and Capital Impact Partners. “We are thrilled to merge Ventures Lending Technologies with Lenders Cooperative to create an industry leading technology firm that can support our teams and the industry as we scale impact lending across the financial sector. Additionally, significant R&D resources will help fuel product additions such as integrated payments, AI assisted workflows, and point-of-sale lending integrations.”
Ventures is part of the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations that includes Capital Impact, CDC Small Business Finance, and Momentus Securities.
Delivering More Value for Commercial and SBA Lenders
Ventures is well known for its scalability and reliability, having supported the origination and servicing of SBA 504 loan portfolios for nearly two decades. Ventures currently supports over 250 lending institutions nationwide and is rapidly expanding to support several of the largest SBA guaranteed lenders in the US.
Currently 99.8% of approved SBA 504 loans are completed on the Ventures platform. In 2024, lenders using Ventures approved over $20 billion in projects on the platform. The organization was noted as substantially outperforming 24 other competitors in an analysis conducted by the Urban Institute.
“I am really excited about the opportunities this merger brings to our customers, the combined entities, and importantly, the Ventures staff,” said Tom Brune, President of Ventures. “We are joining forces with a like-minded technical firm that will allow us to increase our R&D investments and add additional expertise, which can provide benefits to our current customers. I’m equally excited to demonstrate to commercial banks, credit unions, and other fintech companies the loan servicing value that Ventures can deliver as part of the Lenders Cooperative platform.”
The Lenders Cooperative base technology is best known for its role in supporting the federal government during the pandemic facilitating the origination and forgiveness of over $900 billion of pandemic lending and grants. With the merger of the Ventures platform and Lenders Cooperative, the organization will support over 500 financial institutions.