Serial entrepreneur Ron Benegbi is on a mission to help small business owners everywhere access fair credit. Currently working on his fifth start-up venture, he is taking a new approach to credit evaluation and scoring to empower lenders and make entrepreneurs’ dreams come true.
“The small business ecosystem is personal to me,” Benegbi says. His family immigrated to Canada in his early 1970s, and his father worked as a baker at night to make a living. However, he dreamed of opening his own business. It was a convenience store selling groceries, produce, and prepared meals, a rarity in the Toronto suburbs at the time. He applied for a loan at a local bank but was told he was not eligible.
But the branch manager said something that would change the trajectory of his father’s life. “I believe in people, and there’s something about you.”
The $5,000 loan became a small chain of stores and a stepping stone into the middle class.
Currently, Benegbi is the founder and CEO of Uplinq. Uplinq is a global credit evaluation and scoring platform for small business lenders, enabling them to approve loans and manage risk that might otherwise be declined. Uplinq improves underwriting standards by incorporating environmental, market, and community data to better understand specific loan applicants and seamlessly provides information to lenders via APIs.
Small businesses have a huge impact on the global economy. These companies represent 90% of all businesses, employ approximately 70% of all employees worldwide, and spend up to $50 trillion annually, yet many struggle to get credit. I am. A 2023 study by Goldman Sachs found that more than 75% of small business owners are concerned about access to financing.
“You have to fight for every dollar.”
Ron Benegbi
Small businesses fall into what Benegbi calls the “missing middle class.” This is too big for microfinance institutions to serve, but too small for the formal banking sector to serve, making it too risky. He wondered, “How can we help small business lenders better assess and assess risk from a new perspective?”
This question led Benegbi to consult financial services veteran Pat Riley. Pat Riley launched his AI-powered credit adjudication platform for banks in 2006, and it has been used to underwrite over $1.5 trillion in loans worldwide. They co-founded Uplinq to help banks see the big picture beyond the balance sheet. We leverage billions of locally verified data points accumulated over 15 years to make sophisticated loan recommendations with limited risk.
In its third year, the company joined the Mastercard Start Path Small Business program in January. This includes enterprise partnership readiness training, dedicated mentoring, Mastercard partner introductions and technology collaboration opportunities.
Like the people his platform ultimately serves, Benegbi is no stranger to building a business from scratch. He’s currently working on his fifth venture, and if his wife wishes it will probably be his last, he laughed. “I don’t have a job. I can never work as an office worker,” he says frankly. “I have to be at the forefront of innovation, and the challenge of building something is thrilling.”
What advice would you give to future startup founders? No matter how successful your business is, “you have to fight for every dollar,” he says.
