Casca is an AI-native loan origination system designed for small business lending, automating up to 90% of the manual work involved in the loan process to help banks fund commercial loans significantly faster than industry averages. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Casca Co-Founder & CEO Lukas Haffer to learn more.
Background and Origins of Casca
Asked about his background and how the idea for Casca came together, Haffer shared:
My path to founding Casca was shaped by two parallel tracks that eventually converged: AI and banking.
Earlier in my career, I worked as Chief of Staff at Avaloq, one of the world’s leading core banking providers, managing infrastructure supporting over $4 trillion in assets. That experience gave me a front-row seat to how banks actually operate and how deeply entrenched legacy systems are in financial services.
Later, at Stanford, I immersed myself in machine learning and AI research. I was building AI systems, winning hackathons, experimenting with predictive models. What became obvious was this major gap in the market: there were brilliant people in AI who didn’t understand banking, and experienced bankers who didn’t understand AI. Very few people deeply understood both.
At the same time, I kept coming back to one core problem. Small business owners were not getting the attention and support they needed. It’s not that small businesses struggle because they lacked creditworthiness; they were struggling because the infrastructure around them was fundamentally broken.
Small and medium-sized businesses make up 99.9% of U.S. companies and nearly half of GDP. Yet millions still struggle with reliable access to affordable capital. Traditional banks offer responsible loans, but rely on loan origination systems built more than 15 years ago. These platforms are filled with manual steps and outdated workflows that stretch SBA loan timelines to 60–90 days. Meanwhile, online lenders can move quickly, but often charge triple-digit APRs.
The result is a systemic failure. 76% of SMBs say limited access to affordable capital has harmed their business, and commercial lending demand has grown 65% over the past decade. Banks, which are the safest option, were losing borrowers purely because of speed.
I spent months interviewing CEOs, CTOs, loan officers, underwriters, and branch teams. I mapped every bottleneck and every manual breakdown in the process. The conclusion was clear: banks didn’t need incremental AI features. They needed entirely new infrastructure. That realization led to the creation of Casca, the first AI-native loan origination platform purpose-built for business lending.
Core Products and Features
Asked about the company’s core products and features, Haffer detailed:
Casca is an AI-native loan origination system designed specifically for small business lending. The platform automates up to 90% of the manual work traditionally involved in lending, including document collection, borrower communication, financial analysis, and underwriting preparation. With superior functionality and dramatically faster loan processing, Casca funds commercial loans up to 10x faster than other fintechs and 30x faster than industry averages, leapfrogging the competition and setting a new industry standard.
Key capabilities include:
- AI-powered document extraction and data structuring
- Automated borrower follow-ups and application tracking
- End-to-end workflow orchestration
- Full audit trails and explainability built into every action
Instead of loan officers chasing emails and PDFs, they receive a decision-ready file. Instead of borrowers waiting weeks for updates, they get real-time communication and clarity. The impact is measurable. This isn’t about layering AI onto a legacy system. It’s about rebuilding the process from the ground up.
Technology Evolution and Funding
Asked how the company’s technology has evolved since launching and whether he could discuss funding and revenue metrics, Haffer described:
From day one, our thesis was simple: you can’t bolt AI onto a 15-year-old architecture and expect transformation. The system has to be AI-native.
Over the past two years, we’ve worked closely with leading SBA lenders to refine and scale the platform. That collaboration has helped us embed compliance, auditability, and explainability into the architecture itself, not as an afterthought.
In 2025, we raised a $29 million Series A led by Canapi Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Peterson Ventures, Alliance Funding Group, and multiple bank customers, bringing our total funding to $33 million. That level of institutional and customer backing signaled strong validation of both the problem and the solution. Today, Casca supports some of the nation’s most active SBA lenders, including Live Oak Bank and Huntington National Bank, who are also investors.
The growth reflects a broader shift: banks recognize they need modern infrastructure to compete on speed without sacrificing responsible underwriting.
Customer Success Stories
Asked to share specific customer success stories, Haffer highlighted:
The market response has been extraordinary. In under two years, Casca has become a trusted partner for leading SBA lenders, including Live Oak Bank (#1 by SBA 7(a) dollar volume), Huntington Bank (#1 by loan count), and Bankwell Bank, Casca’s first customer and now a repeat investor. The strong support from both financial institutions and fintech venture capital firms signals a major shift in business lending.
Some metrics include:
- Within three weeks, Casca replaced a bank’s legacy LOS with a new system that automated workflows by 90% and processed loans end-to-end in 2 days.
- In just two weeks, Casca helped launch a fully automated $15,000 small business loan product that took five minutes to complete and had a conversion rate of over 90%.
- The company’s virtual loan assistant has a response time of 2–3 minutes and has helped financial institutions achieve a 312% increase in lead conversions through automated follow-ups.
- Casca’s digital applications also contribute to a conversion rate three times higher than current forms or PDF files.
Competitive Differentiation
Asked what differentiates the company from its competition, Haffer emphasized:
The biggest difference is that Casca is AI-native. Most legacy providers are trying to add AI features to systems built decades ago. That approach creates friction, compliance risk, and limited automation.
We rebuilt the infrastructure entirely. For borrowers, speed can determine survival. A pizza restaurant shouldn’t wait two months to replace its broken pizza oven. A contractor shouldn’t lose jobs because a truck is out of commission. Casca allows banks to close loans in days instead of months, delivering capital when it matters.
For lenders, we remove the bottlenecks that require hours of manual effort. Underwriters receive structured, organized data instead of fragmented documents. Loan officers can focus on advising customers rather than chasing paperwork. Community banks can compete with fast-moving online lenders without sacrificing fair rates or regulatory integrity.
A Favorite Memory
Asked about his favorite memory working for the company so far, Haffer reflected:
The most meaningful moments are when a bank goes live and sees immediate impact. But what stays with me most are the borrower stories. I grew up watching my family nearly lose everything during the 2008 financial crisis. That experience never left me. So when I hear that a business owner secured funding in days instead of months, and that it allowed them to hire, expand, or simply keep their doors open, that’s deeply personal. I started Casca because I believe small business owners deserve better than a system that makes them wait 90 days or pushes them toward predatory lenders. Every time we help a bank deliver capital faster and more fairly, it reinforces why we built this in the first place.
Challenges in the Sector
Asked whether he has faced any challenges in his sector of work recently and how he overcame them, Haffer outlined:
AI in banking comes with real skepticism, and honestly, it should. When you’re dealing with people’s livelihoods and their access to capital, you can’t afford to get it wrong. One of our biggest challenges has been demonstrating that AI can enhance responsible lending rather than compromise it. We address that head-on through explainability and human oversight. Every action in our system is logged with a full audit trail. Every customer-facing message is monitored for compliance. Critical decisions still involve human judgment. I’ve always believed that AI should elevate bankers, not replace them. The banks we work with don’t want a black box. They want a system they can trust, that their regulators can trust, and that their borrowers can trust. That’s what we’ve built.
Future Goals
Asked about the company’s future goals, Haffer concluded:
Over the next three to five years, we believe legacy loan origination systems will be replaced by AI-native platforms. The economic pressure on banks is only increasing. Borrower expectations are permanently changing. Small businesses need faster access to capital to compete, and they have more options than ever, including alternative lenders who can approve in hours. Once businesses experience applying at 10 PM on a Sunday and receiving clarity within days, there’s no going back. Community and regional banks have to match that speed while maintaining responsible underwriting and competitive rates. The only way to do that is through automation.
Our focus is to expand across commercial lending categories, SBA, CRE, asset-backed, and beyond, while continuing to lead in responsible, explainable AI for banking. Ultimately, our mission remains the same: modernize lending infrastructure so banks can deliver capital faster, more fairly, and at scale.
