Hear from Best Consumer Lending Platform: Kasasa
At the inaugural Finovate Awards in New York, over 200 of the industry’s brightest stars gathered fora gala dinner and night of entertainment, to celebrate the fintech industry's best and brightest. We sat down with winner of the Best Consumer Lending Platform, Kasasa to hear about their success story.
Kasasa grew from a desire to help community banks and credit unions to not just stay in business and help their local communities as they’re known to do, but to grow, thrive and meet their goals. Kasasa works with more than 3,500 branches to attract, engage, and retain consumers with branded retail products, world class marketing, and expert consulting. Our mission is to enable a powerful network of community financial institutions to reestablish themselves as the go-to place for banking products and services. This means winning consumers’ attention, engagement, and loyalty. It means taking back the community financial institutions’ rightful share of marketplace and wallet. It means taking back banking.
We’ve all faced situations that we wish we could erase, change or otherwise go back in time to alter in some way. This is especially true when it comes to finances, since one mistake can impact a consumer for years. When it comes to loans, consumers know it’s smart to pay them off sooner, but the nagging “what if” scenarios prevent them from doing so. What if a consumer puts more money toward their loan and unexpectedly needs that money back?
Kasasa’s new concept of “Take-Backs™” allows the borrower to pay ahead to reduce debt, but take that extra back if they need it, making it the most revolutionary loan on the market today. Thanks to the Take-Back, the Kasasa Loan® does not force borrowers to choose between saving for unexpected expenses or paying off debt.
The Kasasa Loan is the most consumer-friendly loan available on the market today. This is in part due to a dashboard that helps borrowers to manage their debt by transparently showing them the status of their loan and what it would mean to pay ahead or use the Take-Back functionality. This hands-on platform allows consumers to see changes they’re considering, giving them control and simplifying the payoff process.
Though the loan is easy to use, Kasasa always provides dedicated, lifetime support to community banks and credit unions. We work with each institution to set the groundwork and execute a plan that delivers on their individual goals. This support includes marketing, staff training, consulting and Builder™, a tool that helps educate consumers throughout the loan-opening process.
Consumers want to get out of debt faster – who doesn’t? But they’re afraid to pay more toward loans in case they need the money. What we found is that the majority of people say they’d refinance at the exact same rate they’re paying now to get the Take-Back benefits of the Kasasa Loan. They prefer this loan, they prefer the dashboard – 85 percent of people say they’d log in monthly to manage their loan – and more than half of them say they’d open a checking account at that institution if that’s what was required to get access to the Kasasa Loan.
The mobile dashboard has also been a total gamechanger in making consumer lending more user friendly. While consumers have long been able to manage their checking and savings accounts visually using online personal financial management (PFM) software, this practice has not typically carried over into lending – until now. Through the app, borrowers can manage their debt by viewing, editing, and making payments as well as withdrawing from their Take-Back balance. As a result, borrowers are more likely to engage with their loan regularly, which encourages better financial decisions.
When we started Kasasa, we were a small company with a dream to change the face of banking and lending. Back then, we never could have predicted we’d be among companies nominated across all of fintech globally, let alone named a winner.
It is an honor to have the Kasasa Loan recognized as Best Consumer Lending Platform. Winning an inaugural Finovate Award validates what we are doing at Kasasa and is a testament to the hundreds of employees who worked tirelessly, and continue to do so, to make our dream a reality. With this win, we are even more motivated to continue to create products that revolutionize the financial industry and support community banks and credit unions in the fight to take back banking.
Find out more about Kasasa