We built Lendforge because bureau-first underwriting was failing the platforms we worked on.
Tanya Richards, CEO and Founder of Lendforge, spent years in credit model development at a marketplace lending platform and then in risk operations at a regional bank in the Carolinas. In both roles she saw the same pattern: platforms that knew their users better than any credit bureau sitting on rich behavioral data, then deferring to a three-digit bureau score that could not see any of it. Lendforge is the infrastructure to close that gap.
The team
Built by practitioners, not generalists
Tanya Richards
CEO and Founder
Led credit model development at a marketplace lending platform and risk operations at a regional bank in the Carolinas. The same problem appeared in both: platforms with deep behavioral data on their users outsourcing credit decisions to a model built for someone else's population. Founded Lendforge in 2023 to build the decisioning layer she kept wishing existed.
Devon Calloway
Head of Engineering
Former infrastructure engineer at a B2B payments platform, where he built high-throughput transaction processing systems with strict latency budgets. Joined Lendforge to design the decision API from first principles, with P99 latency and complete decision auditability as non-negotiable requirements.
Simone Okafor
Head of Compliance
Spent six years conducting fair lending examinations before moving to the platform side. She knows which compliance gaps examiners actually look for and which documentation survives scrutiny. She designed Lendforge's adverse action generation and disparate impact monitoring to meet those standards, because she used to be the one enforcing them.
Our mission
Credit should be priced from the data you already have.
A seller who has processed $400K in GMV on your marketplace over two years is not a credit mystery. The signal to price that loan accurately already exists inside your platform. Bureau scores are built from tradeline history that predates your relationship with that user and misses the behavioral data you hold entirely. Lendforge exists to close that gap: not to replace credit bureaus, but to model the signals bureaus cannot see alongside the signals they can, so your approval rates reflect what you actually know.
Charlotte, NC
Built in one of the largest banking centers in the US.
Lendforge is based in Charlotte, NC. Charlotte is the second-largest banking hub in the US by assets, and that proximity matters when you are building lending infrastructure. Bank partners, compliance counsel, and regulatory affairs professionals are nearby. The fintech ecosystem here is practitioner-led, not hype-led. We built where the lending industry actually operates.
214 North Tryon Street, Suite 2200Charlotte, NC 28202
Charlotte, NC 28202