Since the company’s inception in 2006, On Deck has been focused on bringing innovation to the small business financing space. But, as Jim Collins fans might ask, “What is On Deck’s Hedgehog Concept?” or “What is On Deck the Best at?”

For the past 5 years, On Deck has become the leading provider of technology that facilities small business loans to Main Street businesses. We’re putting technology to use in new ways to streamline and replace outdated lending processes, ranging from origination and underwriting to fraud mitigation and loan servicing, all while maintaining impressively low loss rates. Today we announced that we’re making our technologies available for use in 3rd party applications through the On Deck API.

Why build an API?
The small business financing industry is extremely nuanced. Banks, accountants, small business advisors, online software applications, technical assistance non-profits, micro lenders, and more all contribute to the small business lending ecosystem. We want any participant in the ecosystem to be able to take advantage of the On Deck feature(s) most applicable to that business or organization.

Initial features of our API include the ability to provide a pre-qualification to your small business users on the web and the ability to facilitate a loan application for a client without leaving your CRM system. We’re looking forward to exposing a lot more functionality to 3rd parties over the next year. Feel free to drop us a line with any feature ideas or to request developer information for your company (api@ondeckcapital.com).