LSQ Continues Explosive 2021 Growth into 2022

For LSQ, 2021 represented a year of significant platform, client, partner, and network growth and the company is entering 2022 riding a wave of momentum for future expansion.

Product and Data Innovation

During 2021, LSQ FastTrack®, LSQ’s industry-leading working capital and payments management platform, saw the introduction of a bevy of new features to support supply chain finance (SCF) and dynamic discounting buyers and suppliers and accounts receivable financing clients.

Efforts spearheaded by chief product officer Don Renyer included the total payments management feature that allows buyers to make one payment to LSQ for all their enrolled suppliers’ invoices, regardless of when it was paid (early or at term). LSQ then sorts the payments and sends to the appropriate supplier.

The FastTrack platform updates also included some key automation upgrades in 2021, most notably around the timing of payments. With the automatic early payments feature, suppliers can “set it and forget it” to automate their payments as soon as invoices become available, freeing users to work on priority items, while continuing to maximize liquidity. 

With the set your own terms feature. Suppliers on the platform now have the ability to set when they want to receive payments for their approved invoices for predictability. For example, a buyer may extend terms to 60 or 90 days, yet for payment predictability, the supplier may wish to continue to be paid at 45 days. This new automation feature allows them to attain that predictability with no further action needed. The ability to manually request payment is still available.

In 2021, FastTrack also added new functionality that allows our SCF customers with multiple business units to share an account relationship with the company at large. The new, enhanced dashboard allows SCF customers to be able to view and manage all their business units and invoices from a single view or filter to view one or more specific business units for greater transparency into program usage.

Embedded Finance Partnerships

In the realm of embedded finance, a key new partnership with Esker created an integration of Esker Pay and FastTrack to allow customers to seamlessly implement working capital and cash management solutions with minimal training for buyers or suppliers.

“The synergies between Esker’s industry-leading P2P automation products automate and expedite the invoice approval process, and LSQ’s supply chain financing platform will provide affordable financing options to all suppliers in the Esker network,” said LSQ CEO Dan Ambrico. “Taking advantage of Esker’s leading ERP integration capability also allows LSQ FastTrack to seamlessly connect into the Esker platform, thus into multiple ERP systems.”

In 2021, LexisNexis CounselLink FastTrack doubled the number of customers using the platform. CounselLink FastTrack was launched in 2020 to help companies meet their working capital needs and lower legal spend.

Customer-Usage Explosion

“We are extremely proud that so many new companies came on board this year and trust us to help them meet their working capital and payments needs,” said Vikas Shah, LSQ’s Chief Revenue Officer. “LSQ is experiencing strong market demand as every business is thinking about embedding finance to strengthen their customer, supplier, and partner relationships. This has become a must have in today’s credit environment.”

In 2021, LSQ FastTrack more than tripled the number of customers (both supply chain finance buyers and suppliers and accounts receivable finance clients) on the platform. In all, those customers processed nearly one million invoices totaling more than $5 billion through FastTrack.

Data Growth

“One of LSQ’s key differentiators is the breadth of data that we can use to provide clients with valuable insights into credit and AR/AP management,” said Richard Lee, LSQ’s chief risk officer. “We made tremendous progress deploying data insights to our supplier and buyer network last year, to help clients make more sound financial decisions.”

In all, LSQ FastTrack processed nearly one million transactions (both accounts receivable financing and SCF) from 200,000 companies on the platform to its data collection in 2021.

DEI Partnerships

In 2021 LSQ made inroads in building strategic partnerships to increase access to working capital for businesses owned by members of minority groups that traditionally found themselves underbanked. Of note, in December 2021, LSQ entered into formal agreements with the Chicago and Michigan Minority Supplier Development Councils to provide financing rates to their small-to-medium certified minority-owned businesses on par with the rates normally reserved for larger, tier-1 suppliers. A partnership with the South Carolina-based DEI Consortium provided education to both enterprise buyers and minority-owned businesses on ways to increase participation of underrepresented companies in large supply chains.

Into 2022

“While it presented a number of challenges, 2021 ended up being marked by significant growth for LSQ and LSQ FastTrack across our platform, bank and broker ecosystem and services we offer to our clients,” said Dan Ambrico, CEO of LSQ. “The strides we made in 2021 have put us in prime position to further assist with companies’ working capital and payments needs in 2022.”