A startup in the current NMotion Accelerator class is creating an online marketplace to help physicians and dentists with their finances.
“By the time a doctor gets through undergrad, med school, residency, and into practice, it may be 10 years longer than someone going to work after an undergrad degree,” said Colin Nabity, founder of LeverageRX. “And they may have $260,000 in student loans.”
That can make it difficult to get a mortgage along with other financial challenges.
“There are a lot of unique financial challenges like paying down massive amounts of student loans, a shorter retirement window, and the potential for a malpractice lawsuit,” Nabity said. “They’re playing catch-up with the rest of the general population that has been working for several years.”
Currently LeverageRx works with about 45 partners across several financial services categories to connect doctors and dentists with lenders, financial planners, insurers and other financial and legal experts that focus on this market. The platform also provides product and service comparisons.
Thanks to our sponsor
“We play broker for the best financial partners and services,” Nabity said. “We vet financial advisors and other service partners to make sure they’re quality providers.”
So how do they find the partners and services to feature?
“It’s a combination of us finding them and them finding us,” Nabity said. “When we first started, we were doing a lot of reaching out. Now people are contacting us to be a part of what we’re doing.”
How LeverageRx works
Among its partners LeverageRx works with several large national and regional lenders.
“We have a lot of different relationships with lenders like Bank of America and SunTrust that do unique niche mortgages,” Nabity said. “When your student debt is so high, you typically don’t fit into traditional underwriting guidelines for mortgages. There are niche categories of mortgages specifically to address this issue.”
Most of their traffic comes from large metropolitan areas, according to Nabity.
“Traffic is highly correlated with population, states like New York, California, Texas and Ohio,” Nabity said. “They might have done their undergrad in Omaha, gone to med school in Cleveland, completed their residency in Miami and now practice in Los Angeles.”
LeverageRx takes an affiliate fee or transaction fee for business that comes out of their platform, including for mortgages and loans. Nabity said LeverageRx doesn’t process transactions, but they have the ability to know what business originated though their platform.
“We apply a LendingTree model for products and services specific to medical professionals,” he said.
Visibility for LeverageRx will be helped by a recently-announced partnership with a physician-oriented media channel.
“We just announced a partnership with MD Magazine to provide financial content and comparisons on their platform,” Nabity said.
Lincoln’s vibrant startup community
So what has the NMotion experience been like so far?
“The Lincoln startup community is really special,” Nabity said. “There’s a huge concentration in the Haymarket, and there are just a lot of people here willing to help you out, to make connections.”
The alumni from previous NMotion classes has also been a highlight.
“Many teams are still located in the Haymarket and are doing some really successful things,” Nabity said. “It’s really awesome to tap into the knowledge of the alumni network.”
Nabity said that having assumptions challenged and seeing different business models has been very helpful.
“People are willing to challenge you and make you look at things differently,” he said. “They bring a completely different perspective. And there are many lessons from others that you can take and apply to your business and situation.”
“There’s a ton of creativity here,” Nabity said.
—
Rod Armstrong is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for AIM in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is a regular contributor to Silicon Prairie News.
