Credit Karma, the personal finance company geared toward millennials, is acquiring digital mortgage application startup Approved for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today.
Approved is a young company that launched in 2017 with $1 million in seed funding to provide a digital platform for small-to-medium sized lenders and mortgage brokers to reach prospective borrowers, via a website and mobile software. It was founded by Andy Taylor, former director of product at high-tech brokerage Redfin and Navtej Sadhal, who was a software developer and manager of Redfin’s platform and engineering teams.
“Working with Credit Karma gives us the resources and immediate scale to accelerate our mission-driven work, reaching significantly more homebuyers than we could have imagined when we started,” Taylor, Approved’s CEO, wrote in a blog post on Medium announcing the news.
After more than a decade of providing free credit scores and financial advice to a base of largely young professionals, Credit Kamra has seen many of its users get older and start considering the purchase of a home, Singhal told TechCrunch.
“As we’ve expanded, you’ve seen us move from credit cards as a way to help members with that part of their life to first personal loans to auto — meaning auto loans, auto insurance,” Singhal said. “Today, we’re really talking more publicly about mortgage. Mortgage being for many of our members the most important financial decision they’ll make.”
Over the last two years, both major banks and newer mortgage brokerages have been trying to make it easier for homebuyers to apply for loans online.
