E-LOAN Gets Funding Boost

Online mortgage broker E-LOAN today announced it received $25.4 million in fresh funding.

Investors in the latest round of financing include Yahoo!, SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, SOFTBANK Holdings Inc. and Sequoia Capital.

This is the firm’s second round of funding which it said is intended to help further develop cutting-edge technology, diversify its product offering, and prepare for rapidly growing consumer demand.

Sequoia, Softbank, and Yahoo! join initial
investors Benchmark Capital and
Technology Partners, both of which also contributed to the second round of
financing.

“E-LOAN has enjoyed exponential growth since its June, 1997 launch,” said
Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of E-LOAN. “The consumer response has been
excellent and the
value of leveraging the Internet to eliminate inefficiencies from the
traditional mortgage process recognized.”

“Now we want to broaden our reach by diversifying our product offering,
catering to more consumer market segments, and building the E-LOAN brand.
This second round of funding will enable us to be much more aggressive
without compromising our customer service focus and capacity to respond to rapidly growing demand,” Larsen added.