What HLEND's Capped Exits Mean for Fintechs and Trade Credit
HPS Corporate Lending Fund (HLEND), a non-traded private credit fund with $11.8 billion of net assets at September 30, run by HPS, a part of BlackRock, opened another repurchase offer on November 10. It will buy up to 24,124,118 shares, about 5% of the fund, at the December 31 net asset value. The offer closes December 9, and if investors tender more, the fund buys pro rata.1 2 3
Requests have topped the cap for three straight quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2025, holders tendered 18.9 million shares and were paid in full; in 2026 the fund bought about 54%, 38% and 44% of the shares tendered.4 5 6 7 Blackstone's BCRED also capped its third-quarter repurchases at 5% of shares outstanding, paying for 90.4 million of the 181.3 million shares tendered.8
Bottom line for fintech lenders and trade credit providers: The caps at HLEND and BCRED are working as written, and the filings reviewed here say nothing about changes to the terms either fund offers borrowers. HLEND's 10-Q shows a small line labeled "Asset Based Lending and Fund Finance": about $112 million at June 30, under 0.5% of its investments, though that is not a full count of its lending to finance companies.9 Your exposure sits with whoever buys or funds your loans. Sponsor banks and bank warehouse lines are funded by banks, not by fund investors who can redeem, but bank credit is tightening at the margin: 12 of the 50 banks in the Fed's October survey that lend to business credit intermediaries tightened standards somewhat.10 Forward-flow buyers, non-bank warehouse lenders and securitization investors can be evergreen funds, drawdown funds, insurers or banks; ask yours which.
Dec. 31, 2025 | Sept. 30, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
Investments at fair value | $25.34B | $22.33B |
Principal debt | $13.04B | $10.95B |
Net assets | $12.44B | $11.80B |
NAV per share | $25.22 | $24.45 |
Cox Capital bid $20.17 for HLEND Class I shares in September, 17.5% below the July 31 NAV. That is a discount bid from an interested buyer, not a price holders are known to have taken.11
What Fintech Executives Need to Know
Is the fund losing money on its loans?
Some. Most of it is unrealized, and non-accruals are under 1.3% even at cost. In the first half of 2026 it recorded $382.5 million of net unrealized depreciation and $21.3 million of net realized losses.9 NAV per share fell about 3% in nine months but has been flat since June, and distributions continue.3 6 Loans on non-accrual were 0.70% of debt and income-producing investments at fair value on June 30, against 0.74% at the end of 2025; measured at cost, they rose from 1.08% to 1.27%.9 The fair-value share is lower because those loans are marked below cost.
What could this mean for the companies you sell to on terms?
HLEND lends to what it calls upper middle market companies, with $75 million to $1 billion of annual EBITDA; at June 30 its 359 borrowers had weighted-average EBITDA of $262 million.9 That is the large-account end of trade credit. If your biggest buyers are companies that size, watch whether shrinking semi-liquid funds make refinancing harder for them, which could show up as slower payment or requests for longer terms. These filings do not show that yet.
What don't we know yet?
Whether the fourth-quarter offer will be prorated, which depends on tenders through December 9. How much of the smaller book came from repayments and how much from sales: the third-quarter 10-Q was not on EDGAR as of November 12. And whether any of this has changed what private credit funds charge or advance to fintech lenders.
Our Opinion
What a fintech finance team controls is how well it knows the capital behind its originations. Ask each forward-flow buyer and warehouse lender:
Is the purchase commitment committed or discretionary, and what lets you pause?
What triggers changes to eligibility criteria, concentration limits or pricing?
Is your capital an evergreen fund, a drawdown fund, an insurer or a bank?
If your investors redeem, can that reduce purchase volume or force a paydown?
What notice period and cure rights apply?
Once you have the answers, a line for your board or investor update: "HLEND and BCRED, two large semi-liquid private credit funds, are paying redemptions only up to their 5% caps. We have confirmed our funders' capital sources and the terms that let them slow purchases."
Watch HLEND's third-quarter 10-Q. The fund filed it on November 14, 45 days after the quarter ended, in each of the last four years. That date is a Saturday this year, and SEC filing deadlines that fall on a weekend move to the next business day, so expect it by Monday, November 16.12 13 Look for how much of the smaller book came from repayments versus sales, and whether non-accruals rose. The fourth-quarter result should follow in early February: last year's was filed February 3, about two months after its offer closed.4
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Headlines You Don’t Want to Miss
Enova, the parent of OnDeck, said on November 10 that its board authorized a $500 million share repurchase program through June 30, 2028, replacing a $400 million program; CFO Scott Cornelis called it "the largest in Enova's history" and tied it to "the growth opportunities ahead." The program does not oblige Enova to buy any shares.14 On October 24 we reported that Enova's small-business book grew 34% in a year to $3.98 billion while its 30-day delinquency rate rose from 6.2% to 7.8%,15 and in our November 10 SBA edition we covered OnDeck's second $500 million ABS in under two months.16 The release cites growth, not caution. For anyone benchmarking small-business credit, Enova's next quarterly report will show whether 7.8% keeps rising.
In a CNBC interview reported by Benzinga on November 10, Vivek Bantwal, global co-head of private credit at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said asset-backed finance can earn 100 to 200 basis points more spread than the same borrower might pay in public fixed-income markets.17 Goldman's 2026 insurance survey found a net 38% of insurers plan to raise asset-backed finance allocations over the next 12 months.18 His demand examples were power plants, transmission, data centers and manufacturing, not small-business assets. If you are refinancing a warehouse line, asset-backed finance funds are worth adding to the call list alongside banks, with the same capital-source questions you would ask any funder.
This is payments data from a fraud-detection vendor, not loan performance. Fraudio found that 10.5% of newly observed merchants in a global sample were hit by fraud within their first 90 days, SecurityBrief reported. The merchants were the targets: "Fraudsters don't wait for a business to build six months of transaction history before they begin attacking it," said Fraudio CEO João Moura.19 20 Among 3,923 merchants first recorded in 2025, the median time to first fraud among those affected was 33 days. In the first 90 days, the per-transaction fraud rate was 2.9 times that of payment programs more than a year old.19 For a funder advancing against a short payment history, that is the window to check hardest. Nick Lim, founder of lender Switchboard Finance, recommends treating bank-connected statements differently from emailed PDFs and confirming payee changes by calling a number already on file.21
Sources
1 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Offer to Purchase Up to 24,124,118 Shares, Schedule TO-I (Nov. 10, 2026)
2 BlackRock | BlackRock Completes Acquisition of HPS Investment Partners (July 1, 2025)
3 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Form 8-K, October 2026 distributions and Sept. 30 NAV (Oct. 26, 2026)
4 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Schedule TO-I/A, Q4 2025 offer results (Feb. 3, 2026)
5 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Schedule TO-I/A, Q1 2026 offer results (May 1, 2026)
6 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Schedule TO-I/A, Q2 2026 offer results (Aug. 3, 2026)
7 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Schedule TO-I/A, Q3 2026 offer results (Nov. 2, 2026)
8 Blackstone Private Credit Fund | Schedule TO-I/A, Q3 2026 offer results (Nov. 2, 2026)
9 HPS Corporate Lending Fund | Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026
10 Federal Reserve Board | Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, October 2026, Table 1 (Nov. 2, 2026)
11 Cox Capital Partners via Business Wire | Cox Capital Announces Tender Offers for Class I Shares of BCRED and HLEND (Sept. 23, 2026)
12 SEC EDGAR | HPS Corporate Lending Fund 10-Q filing history (accessed Nov. 12, 2026)
13 Legal Information Institute | 17 CFR 240.0-3, Filing of material with the Commission (Exchange Act Rule 0-3)
14 Enova International | Enova Announces New $500 Million Share Repurchase Program, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1 (Nov. 10, 2026)
15 Beyond Banks | Enova's SMB delinquency rate hits 7.8% (Oct. 24, 2026)
16 Beyond Banks | SBA begins replacing ETRAN for 7(a) loans (Nov. 10, 2026)
17 Benzinga | Forget Direct Lending? Goldman Sachs Says Asset-Backed Finance Is the Next Big Private Credit Opportunity (Nov. 10, 2026)
18 Goldman Sachs Asset Management | Insurers Remain Confident Amid Rising Macro Concerns (15th Annual Global Insurance Survey) (Mar. 25, 2026)
19 SecurityBrief Australia | New merchants face fraud within weeks, Fraudio finds (Oct. 14, 2026)
20 Fraudio | Merchant Initiated Fraud Detection (product page)
21 SecurityBrief Australia | Fast approval is a fraud magnet, by Nick Lim (Nov. 10, 2026)
