Self Financial, the fintech aimed at helping sub-prime consumers build credit and savings, announced Thursday its raised a $50 million Series E led by Altos Ventures, according to a release.
The company said it will use the funding to continue scaling its business, in particular, its core product the Credit Builder Account, a platform that helps customers build credit and savings without hard credit inquiries or prior credit history.
Self Financial currently has 200 employees after hiring 120 since the start of 2021, and plans to add another 50 to 100 new people over the next 12 months. The company has remote personnel in 17 states and has served more than two million customers. With fresh funding, it said it will continue its goal of expanding to the entire US to reach the millions of Americans with no credit or low credit scores.
The CFPB reported in 2020 that 11% of the US population is credit invisible. Another 19.4 million have credit records that can’t even be scored.
The credit building-entity did not reveal revenue figures, but CEO James Garvey did tell TechCrunch the company is doubling 2020 revenue to a nine-figure number later this year.
The platform issues its products through three banking partners, and has a long-term goal of entering the insurance market and launching another product to assist consumers in accessing credit.
“Credit scores are used for a lot of things, and in many states it’s an important factor in determining the cost of auto insurance. We’re going to be helping our customers to get access to auto insurance as one of the benefits of a higher credit score,” Garvey said.
Previous investors Meritech Capital and Conductive Ventures also participated in the Series E, which brings Self Financial’s total funding to $127 million. That figure includes the company’s recent $40 million Series D led by Meritech in December 2020 and a $40 million Series C led by Altos and Conductive in February 2020.
“We deeply support Self’s mission of helping underserved customers to build credit and savings, bringing them into the American financial mainstream,” Altos Ventures Managing Director Anthony Lee, said in the statement, pointing to Altos original investment in Self Financial’s 2018 Series B.
“Since our original investment, Self has helped millions of people build credit and this latest round will enable them to scale their team and products to help millions more.”
In other recent fintech news, Foxquilt raised $8 million to customize insurtech for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Subscription management platform Zuora also unveiled a number of “as-a-service” fintech offerings.