Cedar Credit Builder

Building the world's most innovative personal finance and credit solutions

Last Funded July 2021

$273,757

raised from 62 investors
Pitch Video
Investor Panel

Highlights

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📈 Strategic partners with over 10 million prospective customers and $100 million in annual revenue
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🏦 Industry leading bank partner contracted and path to expedited product expansion
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💻 Highly skilled founding team and successful startup founder experience with over $9MM raised
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💪 Huge market opportunity, with value soaring from $36B to $722B by 2028. 47% Annual Growth Rate

Our Team

I (Adam Finke) have been a consumer lending expert for a number of years and saw first hand the damage high cost credit products can cause. Having managed 80% of the nation's debt settlement loans, the need of a proactive solution was prevalent. I wanted to change the narrative and help people build solid credit profiles before they need them.

Financial Access, Redefined.

Cedar is redefining access to financial services for the 100+ million US Consumers with thin or no credit profile, through our Cedar Credit Builder. The only options for these consumers to build credit before they need it are either high interest credit cards and loans, or restrictive credit builders that require an extended term or a security deposit. With 78% of adult consumers living paycheck to paycheck, asking consumers to sign long-term contracts, or having to lock up their capital in a secured account are not reasonable solutions.

So Cedar has developed an innovative credit builder to remove these pain points. The Cedar Credit Builder is a Cashflow data based line of credit with automated weekly mini disbursements and repayments, that allow our consumers to build credit on auto-pilot. The payments are reported to the credit bureaus each month to help the consumer build a positive payment history and build a strong credit profile.

So when it comes to building credit, there is no easier way than the Cedar Credit Builder. It takes a consumer 5 minutes to set up their Credit Builder account, with NO Credit Checks, No Security Deposits, No Long-Term Commitments, and NO Excessive Interest Rates. Once set up, the consumer doesn’t have to do anything else except sit back and watch their credit score grow.

Starting with "Prepare", Cedar's Credit Builder is a simple and transparent way for our consumers to build a positive credit score so they are best equipped to interact with the financial services industry as it sits today. By turning our consumers' lifestyle purchases in to credit building opportunities, we make the process of building credit safe and flexible. From the credit builder the Cedar product roadmap includes Savings, Demand Deposit Accounts (i.e. checking), and Graduation Credit Products that will be used in tandem to begin Stabilizing our consumers finances and build a foundation for long-term success. Cedar's objective is to continue progressing to the point where we can automate financial processes based on each consumer's specific financial data and goals.

Cedar’s go to market strategy focuses on white labeling the Credit Builder through our strategic partners with clients ready and waiting for our product to launch.  Our largest strategic partner currently has $100MM in annual revenue and access to over 10 million users.  Cedar will utilize our strategic partnership data to develop a specialized direct to consumer marketing strategy.  This approach allows us to minimize customer acquisition costs early in our launch, and allow us to focus on product polishing before scaling in 2022.

These companies each have shortcomings when it comes to requiring consumers to lock up funds in a secured account, extended commitment terms, and minimum overall impact to consumer credit scores. Consumers shouldn't be required and many times don't have the ability to meet these requirements.  This is why the Cedar team built the Cedar Credit Builder.  Remove the hurdles and give our consumers the best chance to succeed.

So when it comes to building credit, there is no easier way than the Cedar Credit Builder. It takes a consumer 5 minutes to set up their Credit Builder account, with NO Credit Checks, No Security Deposits, No Long-Term Commitments, and NO Excessive Interest Rates. Once set up, the consumer doesn’t have to do anything else except sit back and watch their credit score grow.

The Cedar founders are highly skilled and experienced in founding successful startups. Adam Finke (CEO) most recently managed a $500 million consumer lending portfolio. Our CTO and Co-Founder George Ulmer was previously the successful CTO and Co-Founder of Health Crowd which has raised nearly $10 million to date.  Henry Szeto, a Cedar Sr. Developer, is a premier full stack developer and front-end specialist.  He was part of the 10-person development team for Will.I.Am's (Black Eyed Peas) AI startup I.Am+.

Along with our team, Cedar has validated our vision and product roadmap through the addition of two top tier advisors. Trent Sorbe is the President and Founder of Central Payments, and is providing valuable bank partnership support to Cedar.  He is a true architect in the credit and  pre-paid debit arenas.  Kathryn Petralia is the COO and Co-Founder of Kabbage, which sold to American Express last year for $850 million and Forbes ranks her as the 98th most powerful woman in the world.  Both of these titans have been instrumental in our expedited rise in the ranks of Fintech!

Overview