Two Wilmington financial technology firms just finalized a product integration agreement.
 
Last week, Lumos Technologies and nCino announced a partnership in which the two companies will integrate Lumos’ predictive credit scoring model, PRIME +, into the nCino platform. The result will “automate and accelerate financial institutions’ ability to quantify small business credit risk,” according to an Oct. 9 news release.
 
Over its 12-year history, nCino has incorporated an array of software solutions into its cloud-based banking platform to make the platform increasingly useful for both banks and credit unions.
 
Lumos, a two-year-old startup, has focused on leveraging decades of data from the Small Business Administration and other government agencies to build predictive models aimed at helping banks better assess potential small business loan risk. Its PRIME + predictive scoring model considers more factors than traditional loan application assessments do.
 
The addition of PRIME + to its platform aligns with nCino’s mission for the platform: to focus on core functional areas to solve problems for financial institutions, nCino Chief Product Officer Sean Desmond said Wednesday.
 
“It’s very exciting,” he said of the partnership. "As we continue to build out our ecosystem of best-in-class partners, Lumos is a key part of enhancing our small business experience for our customers and accelerating our ability to go to market."
 
Brett Caines, CEO of Lumos, said his team is also “super excited” about the new relationship with nCino.
 
“nCino is a serious channel partner for us, especially given our relative newness,” he said Monday. “We believe we’ve built a best-in-class small business credit risk model. At Lumos, our mission is to expand small business access to capital, [to improve] their ability to get financing.”
 
In creating a model that takes a more holistic approach to rating the risk of a potential loan, Lumos hopes that the product will encourage more banks to lend to smaller businesses, whose creditworthiness may be harder to gauge using traditional scoring methods. Lumos’ focus is designed also to show lenders where they can be more confident in making smaller-dollar loans, which are often seen as riskier than loans of $500,000 or more.
 
Both local fintechs believe the PRIME + integration will benefit nCino’s financial institution customers, and ultimately help those institutions’ customers who are looking for business loans. Desmond also notes that PRIME + also gives nCino another attractive offering for potential new customers.
 
The product integration is exciting to Caines for a further reason: he believes the nCino-Lumos relationship is part of a trend.
 
“From a Wilmington and North Carolina perspective, I think fintechs working together to help expand their reach is really important,” he said. “Think about these technology ecosystems: Wilmington has been a tech hub for a while, and investor dollars are coming in for these tech startups.
 
“But look at larger tech hubs like D.C. and Silicon Valley. They have startups that collaborate to make each other better, to fulfill a larger need. In North Carolina as a whole and in Wilmington, we’re starting to see tech companies working together to solve larger problems. It’s important.”

NOTE: This version of the story contains an expanded version of a comment from Desmond.