Veetahl Eilat-Raichel of Sorbet on creating a lending business built around Paid Time Off

The consumer lending space has seen a great deal of innovation in the past decade or more. But the number of completely new lending concepts that cross my desk has reduced to a trickle in the past couple of years. That is why I was excited to see an idea that was completely original and compelling.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Veetahl Eilat-Raichel, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sorbet. While you could think about Sorbet as an unsecured consumer lender, because that broadly defines them, they have discovered a completely untapped niche: PTO (Paid Time Off). Most employees accrue PTO that has real value and Sorbet has figured out how to tap into that value to create a lending product.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The founding story of Sorbet.
• The size of the unused PTO marked in this country.
• The percentage of employees that accrue PTO.
• How their PTO advances work.
• How they integrate with payroll systems.
• When the issued their first loan.
• Their unique capabilities to underwrite PTO.
• What they consider to be their technological moat.
• What happens if someone uses all their PTO and then leaves their job.
• The two types of personas that uses Sorbet.
• The average loan size and the range of interest rates charged.
• What they have learned in the data so far.
• How they are going to market.
• How they are educating the market on the concept.
• What they learned from the earned wage access space.
• The three revenue streams they have.
• Their biggest challenge in growing the business today.
• How they are funding their loans.
• The early pivot they made that transformed the company.

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