VeriQual closes pre-seed round, launches lender pilots of its VOSE™ verification platform
This Knox-based fintech startup's goal is to become the trusted verification layer for complex income across mortgage, commercial, consumer, SBA and specialty lending.
Since we last wrote about VeriQual back in May, Founder and CEO Bryan Crosby has been busy pitching at “Innovation Night at the Park” and participating in the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center‘s WORKS accelerator.
They also completed their pre-seed and launched lender pilots of their VOSE™ verification platform, which stands for “Verification of Source Evidence.” These milestones took the company from a place of foundation building to commercial execution. Let’s dive into the details.
Closing their pre-seed
VeriQual closed its pre-seed round with a group of angel and strategic investors, plus a conditional commitment from the LaunchTN InvestTN Fund.
The pre-seed round funded the infrastructure behind the platform:
- Seven provisional patent applications consolidating into three utility applications covering core verification methodology.
- IRS Income Verification Express Service (IVES) enrollment led by Co-Founder and Chief Information Security Officer John McNeely.
- Insurance and contracting framework institutional lenders require of any counterparty handling borrower tax data.
Deploying VOSE™
Non-W2 borrowers represent a growing segment across lending markets. In fact, more than 27 million Americans recently filed tax returns reporting self-employment income. Nevertheless, their income verification process remains inconsistent.
“W-2 income verification has become effortless over the past 40 years, but everything else has to be interpreted by hand,” said Crosby. “A borrower who runs a business gets treated as a file to be untangled rather than a customer to be served, and that’s a problem for the industry and borrowers alike. Verifying a business owner should be as routine and as dependable as verifying a W-2 borrower. We are building the infrastructure to do that.”
How does it work? It’s simple. Borrowers upload, VeriQual verifies, lenders decide. The methodology reviews a borrower’s tax documents using a consistent, version-controlled method suited to the lending program. Lenders receive one standardized verification with the income calculation, full source evidence, verification status and a complete audit trail. See the demo here.
The company expects to wrap the VOSE™ pilots underway throughout Q3 and Q4 of this year. After that, they’ll move into full production expansion for Q1 2027.
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