Chuck Allen, CEO: Knnct (Pronounced “Connect”) Engineers Serendipity for Lending and Make the Loan Process Faster, Easier and More Transparent for Lenders

knnct (pronounced “connect”) engineers serendipity for lending and make the loan process faster, easier and more transparent for lenders, brokers and borrowers by instantly and accurately matching & connecting those needing loans with those looking to lend by matching borrowing needs to lending criteria – all from a single application.

Our marketplace uses technology to eliminate luck, fate, chance and bias from the loan process.

Tell us about yourself?

I’ve always loved technology and how it’s meant to make our lives better and more convenient – and am intrigued about the idea of taking traditional activities and using technology to make them more convenient for more people.

I’ve done this a number of times in various sectors but it was my experiences in getting loans that led me to create the concept of knnct.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

Be better prepared as to how you are going to market what you do and how you do. Secondly, better anticipate that a traditional sector like lending might cling to the traditional ways and be slower to adopt than you anticipate.

What problem does your business solve?

The giving and getting a loan is a painful process and it hasn’t been designed for ease of use or convenience – not for lenders or borrowers.

The traditional lending process is filled with friction, pain points and lack of choice and, despite advancements in digital technology, hasn’t changed in more than 50 years. And anyone who’s ever tried to get a loan knows how painful that process can be.

Additionally, 77% of consumers are making the biggest financial decisions of their life based on getting a loan offer from a single lender.

Add to this, that many consumers are completely underserved and have no access to loans simply because they aren’t located close enough to brick and mortar locations and are often end up borrowing at exorbitant rates of interest.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

I started working with developers that were creating marketplaces for specific activities and I began to think about how a digital marketplace could be used to remove friction, pain points, lack of choice and transparency from the lending process – and to create a marketplace that made the lending process faster, easier and more transparent whether for lenders, borrowers or brokers.

And COVID and the fact that we couldn’t have meetings with each other cemented this concept of a digital lending marketplace that worked for all 3 groups.

What is your magic sauce?

It’s the combination of knnct’s fully automated, cloud-based Matching as a Service platform using AI and our ability to create confidence in the data and subscribers that are using the platform that is the secret sauce that makes all of that happen.

Think Craigslist/Kijiji meets match.com – but for lending – or any asset class.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

knnct wants to the premiere destination for getting loans done – regardless of loan asset class (residential and commercial mortgages, business loans, personal loans, auto loans, etc) and to be active virtually anywhere in the world where loans are required.

The technology has been specifically created so that it can be replicated easily for every lending asset class.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

COVID – forced us to completely re-evaluate our marketing strategy.

The idea of a marketplace for lending is relatively new and while we felt that we delivered a number of value propositions for lenders, borrowers and brokers, we had to adjust to the value propositions that each of those groups was looking as a big ticket item – and then to slowly introduce other value propositions.

And we had to gain a better understanding of the drivers that were most important to each of those groups and adjust the platform to better meet the perceived needs to those groups.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We focus each of those groups on how we can meet their needs – and that the needs of the lender are different than the needs of the borrower and the needs of the broker.

And as we start to become better known, it becomes easier to show them how we can actually make their lives easier – despite the challenge of radically changing the traditional way of lendings.

We want every lender, every broker and every consumer to WANT to use our platform because it delivers what it promises – the ideal of making the process of getting and giving a loan faster, easier and more transparent.