KC finance tech firm Lending Standard nabs nearly $500K

Lending Standard CEO Andrew Kallenbach

Kansas City-based Lending Standard recently raised nearly $500,000 to further develop its software and hire additional employees.

The financial tech company snagged the funds from regional investors, and with it has hired two additional technical staff, bringing its total headcount to eight people.

Lending Standard created a platform on which organizations can receive and collaborate on documentation required to finance a commercial loan transaction. The platform helps cut about two months of work off the lending process thanks to collaborative tools and checklists that reduce errors and result in less expensive legal fees.

Lending Standard CEO Andrew Kallenbach said that little has changed in the commercial lending process since the 1980s, which makes it a market ripe for disruption.

“It’s a very antiquated process,” Kallenbach said. “Nothing has changed since the 80s. The last innovation was really the spreadsheet.”

The commercial loan process for multifamily units is an arduous process, Kallenbach said. It often can take up to nine months of back-and-forth between an array of parties — real estate lenders, banks, attorneys, businesses and other financial institutions — that use different programs to mange the mountain of documents required to complete a deal. There often can be more than 200 pages of documents associated with one loan transaction.

Needless to say, it’s a burdensome, expensive operation, he said.

“Today, they have to manually type all of these documents — there are an endless number of forms,” Kallenbach said. “We automate all the documents and letters that have to be completed.”

Lending Standard, formerly Form Zapper, participated in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s E-Scholars program and is a graduate of SparkLabKC.