America's small businesses account for nearly half of all US economic output, yet access to rapid, affordable working capital remains a persistent bottleneck, and AI is shifting the focus of the lending process from manual paperwork to real-time automated analysis.
At the same time, small and medium-sized business lending is coming on chain as one of the fastest growing RWA segments, and the process relies.
On an asset originator that acts as a bridge between the physical business and the blockchain together these technologies are cutting the decision process down from weeks to hours and incredibly is financial infrastructure further by partnering with figure to become the first organization to bring SMB lending on chain.
Joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange is Ryan was co-founder and co-CEO of Credibly Ryan.
To have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you very much for having me.
Appreciate it.
Well, we are living through quite the economic landscape in 2026, but when it comes to small and medium sized businesses here in the US, give us the lady of the land as we head into the second half.
Yes, so, you know, I would say that small businesses have always had trouble gaining access to working capital.
So since 2008, you're seeing.
Banks sort of pulling back and retreating.
You're seeing it pretty consistently across the board.
So like every year you're seeing a slow sort of diminishing market share, and so we counter position ourselves against banks.
Banks do quite a bit.
They do mortgages, they do consumer loans.
They do small businesses, and they do treasury services.
We focus solely on S&P lending, and so what credibly is done is we simplified the process from application to funding can be same day.
And we really just leverage data, predictive analytics, AI to make better credit decisions and ultimately do a risk-based pricing to the small business so that we can offer them small business loans at an affordable rate.
Yes, and speaking of SMB lending, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange, and we continue to hear about things coming on chain.
So when it comes to the SMB lending side coming on chain, tell us what's actually happening.
Yes, so I would say that it's very new right now.
So you know, obviously the buzzwords RWA, real world.
Assets that's consistently and what we produce is a real yielding asset.
So I would say by definition we are a real world asset.
So what we've done is we've recently partnered with Fire Technologies and that that has tokenized our portfolio.
We put a small piece of our portfolio.
We announced this partnership in May and we're really excited by it just because we're leveraging a technology that's never existed before, offering it to investors, both institutional and individuals, and it's something that we're quite excited about.
And how does all of this level the playing field for SMB owners?
So to be truthful, it's, it's, you know, today it doesn't change.
So what credibly does is we look at a small business and we then make credit decisions based on our predictive analytics, probability of default, leveraging AI, and Do risk-based pricing.
So if you're a business that's been around for, let's say 6 months, it's going to be a higher risk business than a doctor who has been in practice for 25 years.
So and that is all reflected in what we do.
So I would say from how we, how we're leveraging blockchain is really on the back end.
And once, once we fund the loan and then the The backside, the plumbing of what we're doing is sort of with figure is where we think there's going to be some efficiencies for the small businesses where we can ultimately bring the cost of capital down and then pass that along to the small business owner.
Yes, and I do want to expand on this.
So what does it mean in terms of costs?
Costs.
So when you think about it from the standpoint that we have done 4 securitizations in 5+ years, OK, and the costs, so currently we're paying about 150 basis points for that securitization over a 3 year period.
So it's 50s a year that we pay.
So we think that there's some efficiencies by sort of stripping that out of the ABS market.
When you look at Tradfi versus DeFi, I think that there is a place for both.
So I don't want to say that DeFi is going to completely remove Tradfi, but I actually think that it's it's a part of, it's something that's emerging, and we want to be ahead of it and we want to test the market, and we're proving it right now.
And we all know that artificial intelligence is transforming industries as well as businesses.
So when it comes to your space, what do you think SMB financing will look like, not just by year end, but also in the next 5 years?
Yes, that's interesting.
So you know, I believe that the way we're leveraging AI right now is We have two patents that we've secured on a non-provisional basis.
They're workflow patents, so we're leveraging like gente pricing, and so we're taking what has been sort of like a mundane or very standardized way of underwriting questions that humans typically ask or look at.
And we're we're actually using AI on an energetic basis to answer those and move it through the process quicker, so we still believe that humans are in the loop.
So you know I view AI as decision making and I view blockchain more as infrastructure.
So you know where the investors on the blockchain side, it will broaden.
So when we do an asset bank securitization, we have a bunch of institutional investors from insurance companies to large credit funds to large money managers.
Once it goes on chain, those same parties can also invest, but the difference is when you do an ABS.
Typically they're locked for 3 years, so there's no liquidity.
There is a secondary market somewhat, but we're not seeing it that much on our ABSs and this on a blockchain marketplace platform similar to figure.
It will create liquidity, so those same investors who come in to buy on our ABS can now move out of that position if they have a different or better opportunity or you know pivot from their strategy and You know, I would say on a conventional basis on an ABS they were sort of locked in.
And finally, before I let you go, you mentioned the types of small medium businesses that are out there, but we all know that they are stretched for time.
So in a nutshell, for the person who's watching right now and trying to make sense of this, what would you tell them in a nutshell in terms of what you're doing credibly, OK, so what we do is we, we look at.
We're heavy into AI and data and analytics, so we're really looking at the customer as in their bank statements, time in business, and when we look at bank statements, we're specifically looking at what their cash flow looks like, what the revenue is, like how they're holding their average daily balance, how they're managing their cash, how they're transferring their cash, and less on the credit side.
So credit to us is, I think like maybe like a 13th or 14th most predictive data point that we're using in our decisioning.
So it's really sort of like we're really trying to judge the business based on how they operate and they're able to leverage their cash flow as an asset that they otherwise wouldn't.
And so when a small business historically would go to a bank.
It could be a 2 month process to get a no and so we're making decisions in sub 4 hours and in the next quarter we're launching an automated offer so where they will get decisioning in 2 minutes just based on data latency and then they will have a They will have a decision and they can go through an online checkout and fund in 10 minutes.
So it's really like a difference in terms of how small businesses can access and you know we all know speed is important, but we don't we're not judging speed based on we're still balancing risk.
And making the best decisions we can based on the data that we have available to us.
Well, Ryan, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for joining us here at the New York Stock Exchange and sharing the story incredibly.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
