Global software company Oracle has teamed up with Boss Insights, a Toronto-based startup to launch a Paycheck Protection Program platform that addresses loan forgiveness, the companies announced today.
Oracle will make the PPP platform available to its clients.
Boss Insights is using some of its 800 APIs to provide lenders with real-time data from small and medium-sized businesses by connecting directly with the software used for accounting, human resources, and customer relationship management. Partnering with Oracle will allow Boss Insights to scale the product, leveraging its distribution network and cloud services.
With the direct connection to SMB payroll data, Boss Insights is tackling compliance as well as the forgiveness aspect of the PPP loans that has muddled the processes for many participating lenders. Boss offers an online portal to intake PPP applications, automated prequalifications and real-time monitoring of the account and loan. The startup tweaked and repurposed its own existing products to build an application that can help banks with distributing government relief funds for small businesses.
“We’re doing it on the guidance of today and if the guidance changes, we will make the changes on our software and it will change the calculation,” said Keren Moynihan, CEO and co-founder of Boss Insights. “We didn’t build it to calculate one way and leave it at that. If there is a change in the forgiveness calculation, we will just tweak that. We wanted it to be easy to adapt.”
Without clear guidance from the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Treasury, many lenders have been left in limbo, awaiting government instruction on the forgiveness process for the PPP loans. As part of the CARES Act, borrowers who put the funds toward payroll costs, interest on mortgages, rent and utilities will have some portion of their loan forgiven. According to the SBA website, 75% of the forgiven amount must go to payroll.
This is the first time Oracle and Boss Insights are partnering. The Canadian startup is a member of Bank Innovation’s sister accelerator program for financial services, INV Fintech, which connected the two companies.
“The way the solution came about speaks to the benefits of having an ecosystem-driven approach,” said Rodrigo Suarez, principal at INV Fintech. “We identified a mutually beneficial opportunity that addressed an extremely timely issue and were able to bring both parties to start working together within days.”
Boss Insights was founded in 2017, and works with banks and credit unions in Canada and the U.S.
The collaboration between Oracle and Boss Insights highlights the importance of corporates and startups working together, Suarez said.
“Startups like Boss Insights are able to contribute cutting-edge technologies and the ability to rapidly adapt to market needs, while corporates like Oracle provide scalability, distribution, and a broad suite of enterprise-ready capabilities,” he said.
