I first chatted with Michael Phillips, the founder of NickelSteamroller.com back in 2011. He talked about wanting to create a resource site for investors that would allow anyone to easily analyze the loan history of Lending Club. NickelSteamroller.com was born and I became one of its biggest fans.
Michael joined up with Rocco Galgano, the creator of Prosper-Stats.com, in 2013 and together they have made NSR (as it has become known) into the industry’s number one resource and analytics site for Lending Club and Prosper investors. They also created the first third party order management system in the industry – something that I have been using for my P2P lending investments since 2012.
For years Michael and I have talked about combining our efforts in some way but we didn’t get serious until after LendIt last year, when both the Lend Academy Investments and Nickel Steamroller teams all met in person for the first time. Last month we closed on a deal that merged these two companies.
Introducing NSR Invest
The merger of Lend Academy Investments and Nickel Steamroller has created NSR Invest. We feel that this merger will create a stronger company and one that provides a more complete set of services for all P2P lending investors, with a definite emphasis on the retail investor.
NSR Invest will offer products for three different kinds of clients:
- Full-service managed accounts for individuals and their financial advisors
- Conservative, Balanced and Assertive investment strategies with low fees and solid returns.
- An Advisor Portal for investment advisors who need visibility into many client accounts at once.
- Full API integration with Prosper, Lending Club and Funding Circle.
- Strong reporting and analytics.
- An investment fund for accredited investors with both consumer and small business credit investments.
- This is an excellent investment opportunity for accredited investors, especially those who live in p2p-unfriendly states.
- An order management system and SaaS-based reporting platform for institutional investors.
NickelSteamroller.com is Now NSRPlatform.com
If you type Nickelsteamroller.com into your browser today you will notice that it now forwards to NSRPlatform.com. This is the new home for the great site that many of us have grown to depend on. All the same functionality is there and all registered users have been migrated over to NSR Platform.
What has changed in this, the third iteration of the Nickel Steamroller software, is new functionality targeted at investment advisors.
A Renewed Focus on the Retail Investor
It is not news to regular readers that institutional investors have come to dominate this industry. But when you speak with the CEOs of both Lending Club and Prosper they maintain that the retail investor has high importance.
The challenge has been that many retail investors are not do-it-yourselfers. They want someone else to help them manage their investment. This particularly applies to the huge investor population that uses financial advisors. So NSR now provides functionality that enables investment advisors to easily manage the P2P lending investments of multiple clients.
A Solid Team
The CEO of this new company will be my good friend and partner, Bo Brustkern. Michael Phillips will be Chief Architect, Rocco Galgano will be Chief Engineer and my other Lend Academy partner, Jason Jones, will be the Head of Corporate Development. I will not have a role in the day-to-day operations of NSR Invest; I will have more of an advisory role.
Even though I will not be actively involved in the operations of NSR Invest I will be paying very close attention and helping out wherever I can. I am excited about this new merger and I think it really is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.