Four things anyone can bring to a loan
2026-07-07
In 2021 I drew the embedded-lending value chain as nine boxes on a ladder — borrower at the bottom, lender at the top — and beside it a claim: every participant adds value along one or more of four dimensions: capital, distribution, data, technology. I never drew the grid itself; “one or more” carried it. The frame settled arguments anyway: if an entrant can’t name the column it strengthens, it isn’t in the value chain — it’s in the way.
Fig. 1 draws the grid the 2021 diagram implied, and adds the row that didn’t exist yet. A borrower’s agent is a new row, not a new column. It concentrates distribution — it is the channel now. It generates data — the mandate log is underwriting-grade. It rents its technology, and it brings no capital. Read its row against the embedding platform’s and the next fight is legible before it starts: two actors, same two columns. Capital, as ever, is somebody else’s job.
New actors keep arriving. The columns hold.
The long version: The Embedded Lending Value Chain (Emb.F[x], 2021).