Casca Gives Banks 10x Loan Origination Edge

AI lender Casca has secured $29 million in Series A funding in August 2025, led by Canapi Ventures, with participation from several banks and fintech investors. This brings Casca’s total funding to $33 million.

Funding Details

• Lead Investor: Canapi Ventures.

• Other Participants: Live Oak Bank, Huntington National Bank, Bankwell Bank, Y Combinator, Peterson Ventures, and Alliance Funding Group.

• The round follows a $3.9 million pre-seed raise completed 15 months prior.

• The funds will be used to scale operations, grow the team, and accelerate go-to-market efforts.

About Casca

• Founded: 2023 in San Francisco by AI and banking technology experts, including Stanford and Y Combinator alumni.

• Product: Casca offers an AI-native loan origination platform built for banks and credit unions, automating up to 90% of manual loan processing effort.

• Claims to process and fund commercial loans up to 30 times faster than traditional industry averages, and 10 times faster than most fintech competitors.

Platform Benefits

• Enables banks to make lending faster and more affordable, helping local institutions become lenders of choice in their communities.

• Features include AI-powered document processing, instant pre-qualification, automated credit checks, and a chat-based AI loan assistant.

• Its clients and investors include top SBA lenders and FDIC-insured banks.

Strategic Goals

• Casca aims to help smaller banks and credit unions compete with fintech giants by streamlining lending workflows and rapidly digitizing their operations.

• The Series A funding will help expand platform reach, strengthen engineering, and accelerate hiring to meet growing demand from financial institutions.

How traditional lending institutions are specifically adapting with Casca?

Traditional lending institutions, often perceived as slow and bureaucratic, are making significant, AI-driven advancements that directly impact the competitive landscape for alternative business lenders. Casca, as an AI-native Loan Origination System (LOS), is a prime example of how these incumbents are not merely modernizing, but fundamentally transforming their operations to rival the agility and accessibility once exclusive to alternative finance. This isn't just about incremental improvements; it's about redefining the operational efficiency and customer experience benchmarks in small business lending.

• AI-Native Transformation of Loan Origination

  • Casca is designed from the ground up to be an AI-native platform, meaning artificial intelligence isn't an add-on, but the core engine driving the entire loan application process. This allows traditional banks to originate 10x more small business loans with 90% less manual effort.

  • This is a fundamental shift from legacy systems, enabling capabilities that were previously unattainable for large, established institutions due to their complex infrastructure.

  • For alternative lenders, this means traditional banks can now achieve lending processes that are faster, simpler, and cheaper than ever before, directly eroding the competitive advantage alternative lenders historically held in speed and low administrative burden.

• Deployment of Intelligent AI Assistants for Enhanced Customer Engagement

  • Casca's flagship AI Loan Assistant, "Sarah," acts as an infinitely patient and kind virtual assistant that guides small business owners through the entire application process. Sarah manages customer dialogues, proactively asks for required documents, and answers questions around the clock.

  • This level of automated, personalized customer service ensures instant communication, with responses within 2-3 minutes, even for inquiries that come in after traditional business hours (which account for 63% of all inquiries).

  • The implication is that traditional lenders can now offer an "effortless customer experience" and "personalised financing recommendations" at scale, directly addressing a key area where alternative lenders differentiated themselves.

• Dramatic Reduction in Loan Cycle Times and Administrative Costs

  • Casca is already demonstrating nearly 3x higher conversion rates for loan applications and a 90% reduction in manual back-office effort compared to traditional methods. This includes automating document collection and KYB checks.

  • For example, it has successfully transformed a complex, 90-day SBA loan process into a seamless 14-day sprint for its clients, drastically shortening the time to funding. This directly challenges the rapid funding promise of alternative lenders.

  • Loan officers using Casca save an estimated 20 hours of time per week otherwise spent on following up with applicants, freeing them to focus on more strategic tasks or handle a significantly larger volume of applications.

• Robust Compliance and Security for Regulated Environments

  • Recognizing the stringent requirements of the financial sector, Casca is built for highly regulated banking, incorporating banks' compliance policies and monitoring AI generations with "humans-in-the-loop". This proactive approach addresses concerns about AI "hallucination" and regulatory uncertainty.

  • The platform boasts best-in-class cloud infrastructure (AWS, MS Azure, Google Cloud), high security standards (SOC2 certified), and ensures all data remains within the US, adhering to local data protection and privacy regulations.

  • This provides banks with comprehensive audit logs of all AI and human actions, ensuring transparency and accountability, which is a critical factor for financial authorities overseeing AI use.

_{Sources: Casca Small Business Lending, Cascading AI uses Conversational AI to 10x corporate loan origination process, Unicorner Startup of the Week: Casca}

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