INNOVATION – BEST COMPANY IN EQUIPMENT FINANCE
Syndication is a tried-and-true practice in the equipment finance space, but it’s one of many areas of the industry that has been slow to modernize. Luckily, there is a firm whose sole focus is bringing syndication into the future for the industry: Syndifi.
Based in Chicago, Syndifi is an online syndication platform that was founded with the singular purpose of modernizing how companies in the equipment finance industry buy and sell deals. The company just reached its fourth year in business and has already surpassed $12 billion in transactions on its platform while working with more than 500 financial institutions, including Altec Capital, CoreTech, Hancock Whitney, Verdant Commercial Capital, Meridian OneCap, Mitsubishi HC Capital America and many more.
The Syndifi platform creates a digital environment that allows for the secure completion of syndication transactions in the cloud by providing protected file sharing, individual deal and portfolio management and detailed reporting. To ensure its platform is evolving to keep up with the latest technological breakthroughs as well as the needs of its clients, Syndifi is in constant contact with industry stakeholders and partners, utilizing what it calls “listen, collaborate, build and transform” sessions to determine how to best improve its platform.
One of these discussions with a frequent seller on its platform led to one of Syndifi’s newest features. Although most sellers usually offer individual deals or pools of deals, the client in this instance wanted the ability to share groups of deals. Syndifi collaborated with the client to design, build and deploy a new tool to enable such sharing, providing this value-added feature to the entire Syndifi user base.
“We truly embrace a non-myopic mindset that encourages the ‘why not,’” Alistair Canal, who was promoted to president of Syndifi last August, says. “We listen to each stakeholder as though they were the only stakeholder we’ve had a conversation with.”
Deal grouping is one of several new features Syndifi introduced last year, as it also launched DocuSign integration and real-time deal offer submittal and acceptance. Through the DocuSign integration, sellers and buyers can now execute and organize sensitive documents directly in the Syndifi platform. Additionally, with access to real-time deal offering and accepting, buyers can make real-time offers on individual deals and deal pools, while sellers can view, assess and accept or decline offers more quickly and efficiently.
“Equipment finance deals move quickly, and we wanted to build a tool to empower our buyers with the ability to make real-time offers on the deals and pools that our sellers digitally present to them,” Canal says. “This tool saves valuable time and enables the buyer to take immediate action on the deals and pools they want to invest in.”
Just as it attempts to simplify the syndication process for the equipment finance industry, Syndifi takes a straightforward approach to measuring its performance. The company celebrates success when its community members embrace its newest tools and the Syndifi platform overall as a trusted partner and integral part of their organizations. When a solution doesn’t satisfactorily solve a problem the community faces, the entire Syndifi team relishes the opportunity to learn from its setbacks and use those lessons to fuel open-hearted discussion with clients as it returns to the proverbial lab to try again until it can achieve success.
“[We set the tone for innovation] by embracing the problems and challenges we seek to solve for our community as though they are our own personal problems and challenges,” Canal says. “Run with innovation, not against it, as it is more rewarding to be part of building a legacy than staying in one’s comfort zone.” •
