Last year, stay-at-home orders and social distancing mandates quickly accelerated digital adoption in the banking world. As a result, fintech platforms like Blend have seen business skyrocket. Blend’s platform provides banks, lenders and consumers with a digital closing solution for mortgages and home equity loans.
The San Francisco-based company announced Wednesday that it raised $300 million in a Series G led by Coatue and Tiger Global. The latest round comes only five months after the company closed on a $75 million Series F.
At the time, the fintech unicorn was valued at $1.7 billion. The company’s valuation has nearly doubled since to a massive $3.3 billion.
“We’re working to build a smarter future for banking that delivers an end-to-end digital experience for any consumer banking product and an optimal home buying journey from start to close,” Nima Ghamsari, founder and CEO of Blend, said in a statement.
The additional capital will be used to fuel the company’s next phase of growth.
Last year, Blend increased its headcount by over 60 percent after the company welcomed more than 200 new employees to its team. More than half of those new hires joined the team in the back half of 2020.
The company plans to continue that momentum in 2021. Blend is now hiring for dozens of roles across its engineering, finance, marketing and product teams, to name a few.
“No consumer dreams about applying for a home equity line of credit or a mortgage — they’re looking to create a dream kitchen or purchase their first home,” Ghamsari continued. “We are helping our lenders be there as trusted advisors for their customers at every one of life’s milestones.”
A slew of new features and products were introduced to the platform in the wake of the pandemic. The company launched a loss mitigation workflow for homeowners in forbearance, a digital portal to process PPP loans and product updates to help lenders reduce their processing workloads.
Blend facilitated a total of $1.4 trillion in mortgages and consumer loans last year, according to the company.
“The technology advancements of even just the last eight years of Blend’s existence have been enormous,” Ghamsari said in a blog post. “We want to bring the art of the possible to life with our software, pushing the edge and creating a new future for banking that benefits everyone and expands access to the financial system.”
The company has added more than 35 financial institutions to its client roster since August, including South State Bank, TCF National Bank, FirstBank and Evergreen Home Loans, among others.
Blend has raised $665 million in financing to date, according to Crunchbase.
