Will This Online Lender’s Risky Business Model Hold Up?

For Avant’s Al Goldstein, being the quickest online-loan startup to lend $1 billion isn’t that cool. He wants his 2½-year-old company to be worth $100 billion, on the scale of Bank of America or Citigroup. “Our long-term vision for Avant is to build the Amazon of financial services,” says Goldstein, 34. “The opportunity is massive.”

While eventually Goldstein wants to expand around the world with auto loans, credit cards, and maybe even mortgages, Chicago-based Avant has only one product to date: installment loans for people with a few dings on their credit report. Other lenders would call some of these borrowers subprime. Goldstein calls them “the underbanked middle class” and says they have few options for credit. Traditional banks make it difficult for them to get $5,000 or $10,000 loans, he says. Using Avant’s app, they can request money almost like they’re hailing a car with Uber and have it as soon as the next day.