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Home improvement lender buys Simply Group’s over $1.5-billion assets, SNAP Home Finance and certain assets of EcoHome Financial
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Financeit Canada Inc. is expanding its share of the Canadian home improvement financing market by acquiring rival Simply Group Financial.
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Financeit, which offers point-of-sale financing for home improvement, recreational vehicle and retail industries, announced on June 26 that it closed a deal to buy Simply Group’s over $1.5-billion assets, SNAP Home Finance and certain assets of EcoHome Financial.
“We’re thrilled to announce another milestone in our growth journey as we focus on expanding our market footprint and our enduring commitment to the Canadian point-of-sale financing market,” Michael Garrity, Financeit chief executive said in a press release.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The takeover follows Financeit’s acquisition by InterVest Capital Partners in 2022.
Toronto-based Financeit provides payment plans to enterprise businesses, big-box retailers, OEMs and dealer networks for their projects and purchases. It operates as a subsidiary of CommunityLend Holdings Inc.
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The company said Simply Group Financial, SNAP and EcoHome have facilitated over $3 billion in home improvement loans for more than 500,000 Canadians. The merger would add Simply Group’s 180 employees to Financeit.
Simply Group acquired all three businesses in 2020, including a $71-million deal for the point-of-sale component of Home Capital’s retail lending portfolio in September and acquiring SNAP Financial Group Inc. in a deal valued at $511 million in October of that year.
Now with FinanceIt, the combined companies are able to take those products and put them on a “superior” technology platform, Lawrence Krimker, chief executive of Simply Group Financial, SNAP Home Finance and EcoHome, said in an interview. Krimker, who founded Simply as Simply Green Home Services in Toronto in 2013, will serve as a board member of the newly combined business.
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“My role is really to ensure that we continue to stay true to the value propositions that we’ve created for our users and for our dealers, and to ensure that the transition of … our collective loan businesses are done successfully,” Krimker said.
“I’m excited about what FinanceIt has in front of them because they have outstanding technology and you couple that with our business, which had best-in-class dealer experience. So you put both of those together, I think it creates a very successful company.”
Krimker said the industry had seen a massive spike in business during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people spent a lot more time at home and saw opportunities to renovate their houses.
“As restrictions lifted, we had another pretty tremendous kind of tailwind to support the industry in the form of higher interest rate costs,” he said.
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He added that those higher interest rate costs pushed people to invest in real assets such as their homes by doing upgrades that improved overall value, and that they looked for alternative methods for financing those projects.
• Email: dpaglinawan@postmedia.com | Twitter: denisepglnwn
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