Numerated was founded in 2017, after its original digital lending technology was incubated and proven for 2 years inside of the largest and oldest mutual bank in the country, Eastern Bank. Digital lending allowed Eastern to differentiate its service in a competitive market with 5-minute borrowing experiences for businesses, ultimately helping them grow their SMB loan portfolio 4X to become the #1 business lender in Boston. That innovation and success earned Eastern attention in the WSJ and Economist, which led to many other institutions looking to license the technology and our eventual spin-out from Eastern as an independent company.
Read more about our story below.
The Numerated platform was initially developed at Eastern Labs, a technology incubator inside Eastern Bank, the oldest and largest mutual bank in the U.S. Labs was created in 2014 when the bank hired a team of fintech entrepreneurs led by Numerated's CEO, Dan O'Malley, to work side-by-side with bankers.
Chairman & CEO of Eastern, Bob Rivers, explained, "We launched Eastern Labs three years ago to build cutting edge technology." Industry experts called Labs "exciting" and "a step in the right direction".
After the initial tests, the Labs team worked with a cross functional team across the bank to build and test a new platform capable of powering real time lending. The platform was initially rolled out in December of 2015 and has been in continuous production at Eastern since then, with many new products, features, and marketing capabilities added since then.
Labs was focused on addressing the question all banks faced: how do we sell more products if customers are coming into branches less? Growth would be impossible if in-branch visits were required. To solve the challenge, the Labs team worked with groups across Eastern to perform a series of tests designed to understand what would happen if the bank acted like a fintech company.
The success of the platform at Eastern led to strong interest from other banks in licensing the software. Recognizing the chance to have an impact not just on its own business but the entire industry, Eastern spun out Numerated in 2017 as an independent company to modernize how banks grow. Numerated quickly attracted interest from partners and investors.
Labs launched a series of experiments beginning with a marketing campaign for small business customers to apply for a loan online or by phone in 2 minutes and receive funding within 2 days. The response shocked everyone: businesses applied for loans at a rapid rate, and every dollar the bank lent was paid back with an attractive rate and return by the end of the test.
When the CARES Act Bill passed in March 2020, Numerated moved quickly to build and launch the #1 digital lending platform for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As of July 2021 Numerated's PPP platform has processed more than $50 Billion in ppp loans for more than 400,000+ American businesses.
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