Propel Holdings CEO Clive Kinross.Duane Cole/The Globe and Mail
A cutting-edge online credit provider, Propel went public in October 2021, one of the last of 20 companies to debut on the TSX in a year-long COVID-19 tech-IPO boom. Some have since faltered, but Propel has grown like gangbusters.
Look at any key financial metric: Annual revenue has more than tripled and will likely exceed US$600 million this year; profit for 2024 was seven times higher than in 2021. (Propel is No. 10 on the Technology Fast 50’s Enterprise–Industry Leaders list—check it out on page 54.)
Is CEO Clive Kinross a charismatic fintech visionary? In part, yes. But he’s also a 55-year-old chartered accountant—a fast-talking and muscular one—who arrived in Canada in 1997 from South Africa. He knows the importance of underwriting carefully while deploying AI and other frontier technology. “The tech part is the ticket to the game,” he says. “But being financially disciplined is absolutely critical.”
His core team includes all three executives with whom he launched Propel in 2011. Kinross had co-founded OpenLane, an online used-car auction platform, in 1999, and California-based KAR Auction Services bought it for US$210 million in cash in 2011. Back then, memories of the global financial crisis were still fresh. “That was the quintessential lack of discipline by the most sophisticated financial services companies on the planet,” Kinross says.
But while financial services in North America and Britain may look like mature sectors, Kinross saw huge opportunities. Yes, there are big banks and other institutions. But they concentrate on mortgages and wealth management for affluent clients. Below that, there’s a vast addressable market. “About half the Canadian population, and about 40% in the U.S., live paycheque to paycheque,” he says.
The key to winning their business was going online to keep costs low. “There were about 24,000 brick-and-mortar storefronts in the U.S. offering small-dollar loans,” he says. “That was more than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.”
And Propel’s technology is scalable. “We’re able to render a decision on 60,000 applications in six seconds or less,” Kinross says. Average loan size is about US$2,000. More than 90% of the company’s business is in the U.S., but most of the staff—about 550 people—are in the Toronto area, with about 40 in Winnipeg and 60 in the U.K. Late last year, Propel bought the British online lender QuidMarket for US$71 million. Operating in three countries means the technology can adjust for different regulatory environments.
And Kinross is in no mood to sell out. “My focus,” he says, “is squarely on building this into a global industry leader.”