 | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(January 2022) |
Andrew Housser | |
|---|---|
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| Born | August 9, 1973 Vancouver, Canada |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | Achieve Company Freedom Financial Network Freedom Debt Relief Bills.com |
Andrew Housser is an entrepreneur who co-founded Achieve(formerly Freedom Financial Network), [1] and who co-founded Bills.com.[ citation needed ]
Housser attended Brentwood College School in Mill Bay, Canada. Housser received his MBA from Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, [2] and received a BA from Dartmouth College, where he graduated summa cum laude, and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. [3] Housser is on the Board of Advisors of the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth College, serves on the board of Brentwood College School, and previously served on the Phillips Brooks School board for six years.[ citation needed ]
Prior to founding Achieve, Housser was an investor in a variety of services, manufacturing, and distribution companies at Littlejohn & Company, a private equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Prior to Littlejohn & Company, he worked for Smith Barney in New York City in the company's investment banking division. [4]
Housser and his business partner, Brad Stroh, founded Achieve in 2002. [5] Housser serves on the American Fair Credit Council's (AFCC) board of directors, a position he has held since 2006, when it operated under the name The Association of Settlement Companies. [6] In 2010, he was awarded the association's President's Award for outstanding voluntary service to the organization and contributions that "benefits the consumer". [7]
In 2005, Stroh and Housser purchased the Bills.com domain and relaunched it as a website that provides consumers with information and interactive tools dealing with personal finance topics including debt relief assistance, mortgage loans, and insurance. [8] In 2008, Entrepreneur magazine named Bills.com No. 3 in the Hot 100 Fastest Growing Companies in America. [9]
In December 2013, the company announced that Vulcan Capital, an investment group owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, would invest $125 million of venture capital in Achieve Company, an online lending platform to make unsecured loans to consumers. Housser is CEO of Achieve Company. [10]
In 2015, Stone Point Capital, a private equity firm based in Greenwich, CT purchased a minority stake in the company. [11]
In 2016, he worked with Stone Point Capital to found the Freedom Consumer Credit Fund LLC (FCCF) which funds the Achieve Lending business. Achieve Lending offers personal loan products to consumers to consolidate their debts, lower interest rates and convert revolving debt into fixed-amortizing installment loans and provides long-term risk-adjusted returns for investors in consumer lending. [12]
In 2019, the company announced the launch of its HELOC, founded to enable people to tap into their home value to consolidate debt, and start building a solid foundation for the future.
In 2022, Achieve announced that it had surpassed more than $15 billion in debt settlement on behalf of over one million customers. [13]
Housser lives with his family in Northern California. He is married to Lara Bridges Housser and is the father of three children.[ citation needed ]
Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money borrowed or otherwise withheld from another party, the creditor. Debt may be owed by sovereign state or country, local government, company, or an individual. Commercial debt is generally subject to contractual terms regarding the amount and timing of repayments of principal and interest. Loans, bonds, notes, and mortgages are all types of debt. In financial accounting, debt is a type of financial transaction, as distinct from equity.
In finance, a loan is the transfer of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money.
A payday loan is a short-term unsecured loan, often characterized by high interest rates. These loans are typically designed to cover immediate financial needs and are intended to be repaid on the borrower's next payday.
GE Capital was the financial services division of General Electric. Its various units were sold between 2013 and 2021, including the notable spin-off of the North American consumer finance division as Synchrony Financial. Ultimately, only one division of the company remained, GE Energy Financial Services, which was transferred to GE Vernova when General Electric was broken up.
CIT Group (CIT), a subsidiary of First Citizens BancShares, is an American financial services company. It provides financing, including factoring, cash management, treasury management, mortgage loans, Small Business Administration loans, leasing, and advisory services principally to individuals, middle-market companies and small businesses, primarily in North America. Under the reporting mark CEFX, it leases locomotives and railroad cars to rail transport and shipping companies in North America. It also operates a direct bank. In January 2022, CIT was acquired by First Citizens BancShares.
Debt settlement is a settlement negotiated with a debtor's unsecured creditor. Commonly, creditors agree to forgive a large part of the debt: perhaps around half, though results can vary widely. When settlements are finalized, the terms are put in writing. It is common that the debtor makes one lump-sum payment in exchange for the creditor agreeing that the debt is now cancelled and the matter closed. Some settlements are paid out over a number of months. In either case, as long as the debtor does what is agreed in the negotiation, no outstanding debt will appear on the former debtor's credit report.
Vikram Akula is an American banker and the founder of SKS Microfinance, a micro finance company and former chairperson of Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd. SKS was an organization that offered microloans and insurance to poor women in India. He stepped down as SKS Chairperson in November 2011 and became Chairperson Emeritus.
Bills.com is a US-based web site providing financial planning tools and financial services for individuals. Topics include credit card, insurance, debt relief, mortgage loan, student loan and various other consumer lending products.
LendingClub is a financial services company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was the first peer-to-peer lender to register its offerings as securities with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and to offer loan trading on a secondary market. At its height, LendingClub was the world's largest peer-to-peer lending platform. The company reported that $15.98 billion in loans had been originated through its platform up to December 31, 2015.
TPG Angelo Gordon is a global alternative investment manager founded in 1988 by John Angelo and Michael Gordon who together ran the arbitrage department of L.F. Rothschild in the 1980s. The firm focuses on four main investment disciplines: credit, real estate, private equity, and multi-strategy.
Blackstone Credit, formerly known as GSO Capital Partners (GSO) is an American hedge fund and the credit investment arm of The Blackstone Group. Blackstone Credit is one of the largest credit-oriented alternative asset managers in the world and a major participant in the leveraged finance marketplace. The firm invests across a variety of credit oriented strategies and products including collateralized loan obligation vehicles investing in secured loans, hedge funds focused on special situations investments, mezzanine debt funds and private equity funds focused on rescue financing.
Bradford G. Stroh is an entrepreneur, who has founded and led several companies, and also an author. Stroh co-founded Freedom Financial Network and several related specialty finance businesses. He is currently the CEO of Bills.com.
Many factors directly and indirectly serve as the causes of the Great Recession that started in 2008 with the US subprime mortgage crisis. The major causes of the initial subprime mortgage crisis and the following recession include lax lending standards contributing to the real-estate bubbles that have since burst; U.S. government housing policies; and limited regulation of non-depository financial institutions. Once the recession began, various responses were attempted with different degrees of success. These included fiscal policies of governments; monetary policies of central banks; measures designed to help indebted consumers refinance their mortgage debt; and inconsistent approaches used by nations to bail out troubled banking industries and private bondholders, assuming private debt burdens or socializing losses.
A payday loan is a small, short-term unsecured loan, "regardless of whether repayment of loans is linked to a borrower's payday." The loans are also sometimes referred to as "cash advances," though that term can also refer to cash provided against a prearranged line of credit such as a credit card. Payday advance loans rely on the consumer having previous payroll and employment records. Legislation regarding payday loans varies widely between different countries and, within the United States, between different states.
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or the global financial crisis (GFC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression. Predatory lending in the form of subprime mortgages targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, a continuous buildup of toxic assets within banks, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm", which led to the Great Recession.
TitleMax, Inc. is an American privately owned title lending business with corporate offices in Dallas, Texas and Savannah, Georgia. The company has more than 1,100 stores in sixteen states. TitleMax serves individuals who generally have limited access to consumer credit from banks, thrift institutions, credit card lenders, and other traditional sources of consumer credit. TitleMax offers title loan and title pawn products which allow customers to meet their liquidity needs by borrowing against the value of their vehicles while retaining use of their vehicle during the term of the loan.
Errol Damelin is a South African entrepreneur and early-stage technology investor. In 2007 he co-founded Wonga, an internet payday loan company that gained notoriety for charging extremely high interest on short-term loans. After Damelin stepped down as CEO of the company in 2013, the company went into administration on 30 August 2018.
SoFi Technologies, Inc. is an American personal finance and fintech company founded at Stanford University in 2011. It offers loans, credit cards, investing, insurance and banking products, while also serving financial institutions via its tech platform. SoFi reports 8.8M clients and 158M platform accounts as of 2024.
Achieve is a digital personal finance company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. Achieve provides consumer financial solutions including debt consolidation, debt resolution, personal loans, home equity loans, financial apps, tools and education.
Avant, LLC, formerly AvantCredit, is a private Chicago, Illinois-based company in the financial technology industry. The company was established in 2012 by serial entrepreneur Albert "Al" Goldstein, John Sun, and Paul Zhang. Initially structured as a mid-prime lender, the company issued its first personal unsecured loan in early 2013 using its proprietary technology to determine an individual's creditworthiness.