January Technologies recently announced that it has raised $12 million in Series B financing, preempted and led by existing investor IA Ventures. Existing investors Brewer Lane Ventures, Third Prime, and Reciprocal Ventures, along with new investors like Upper90, Shrug Capital, and numerous strategic angel investors, joined IA Ventures in the current round. This current funding round follows January’s $10 million Series A fundraise in 2022.
January is a fintech company that humanizes debt collection, helping borrowers regain financial stability while driving creditors to modernize collections. And January’s debt resolution platform rehabilitates relationships with borrowers, drives net recoveries, and reduces risk. January works with leading banks, credit unions, debt buyers, and fintech lenders. Plus, January has been building a single platform for creditors to address their collection and recovery needs.
January has been seeing significant growth and has established itself as a leader in the debt collection industry. And since their Series A funding round, January helped hundreds of thousands of Americans resolve their debt and helped millions move forward on their paths to financial freedom.
During the same period, they quadrupled their revenues and client count. January’s client portfolio includes some of the nation’s largest lenders, ranging from top-20 card issuers and banks to publicly-traded fintechs, top-10 credit unions, and debt buyers. And as they’ve signed new clients and expanded relationships with existing ones since their Series A, they’ve experienced a 5x increase in monthly accounts.
The status quo in the debt collection industry creates more challenging outcomes for consumers and creditors. And this industry has been rife with harassment, trauma, and legal implications for creditors and borrowers. There are 70 million Americans who are directly impacted by debt collection annually. Over one in four borrowers experience threatening tactics from collectors. Unsurprisingly, debt collection is considered one of the top three most complained about sectors in consumer finance.
The data is at the root of many challenges affecting consumers and creditors. And poor data integrity (from outdated technology systems) introduces risk and inefficiency for creditors while provoking poor experiences for borrowers. This leads to poor recoveries, inadequate compliance (e.g. lawsuits), harmed brands (e.g. complaints), and ineffective oversight for creditors. And creditors risk regulatory fines, margins, and reputations when using traditional collection practices.
The higher quality, real-time, and extensive data fuels more personalized borrower engagement and outreach, streamlines internal operations, and allows for codified rules and regulations, resulting in efficient, compassionate, and compliant collections practices.
January’s third-party collection service is 150 times more efficient than traditional methods, and it is the #1 source of debt recovery for 90% of its clients.
From their product to the client base to the team, January has scaled significantly since their Series A fundraiser, and the team is excited about what’s to come in 2024. And since their Series A fundraise in 2022, January has created a compassionate, effective debt resolution experience for millions of borrowers, signed leading financial institutions in the banking, credit union, fintech lending (including BNPL space), and doubled the size of their team.
With this funding round, January is focused on scaling their core product line to the largest financial institutions in the country and launching a solution to address creditors’ needs around delinquent accounts before reaching the point of charge-off.
KEY QUOTES:
“IA is excited to triple-down and lead January’s Series B, bringing a customer-centric collections experience to every borrower in the country and funding the business to profitability. January has proven that industry-leading recovery rates and happy borrowers is not only possible, but reliable at scale, across millions of borrowers served.”
“We’ve worked with January for six years since leading their seed round, and have seen them outperform every expectation of the most demanding financial services brands in the country. People expect their banks to offer complete transparency, intuitive mobile and web access, and empathetic customer support available 24/7 across digital channels, and debt collection should be an extension of that experience. Legacy collections agencies treat borrowers like criminals, and January has shown that treating borrowers like customers works better. The platform is poised to scale to every creditor in the US and beyond and fix this historically broken relationship.”
— Jesse Beyroutey, Managing Partner, IA Ventures.
“January’s continued investment in our relationship has paid dividends operationally, in driving greater recoveries, and in creating a more positive borrower experience.”
— Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union
“For a long time, we toiled away with the belief that treating consumers in a more compassionate manner would achieve better outcomes for consumers and creditors alike. The desire to create a better system drove our team, while we lacked statistical significance to substantiate our conviction. As our approach has touched millions of consumers’ lives, we hear weekly from borrowers expressing profound gratitude for resolving their financial challenges in a manner that upholds their dignity. The latest round empowers us to scale a new standard of compassionate collections to tens of millions more. Together with leading financial institutions, we’re not just dreaming of a more empathetic financial ecosystem. We’re actively building it.”
— Jake Cahan, Founder and CEO, January
