The Latest in ABS and Debt Markets

Welcome to The Data Tapes—your biweekly snapshot of private credit and ABS markets. In each edition, we bring you concise updates on debt financings, platform fundraises, data insights, market trends, and the latest from Setpoint.

🚀 What’s New at Setpoint

• 🚀 Operate with Confidence Across Every Lender Relationship: Setpoint’s Capital OS takes the complexity out of syndicated deal operations with role-based visibility, automated reporting distribution, and a built-in audit trail. See how it works in our latest product spotlight.

• 🤝 On the road this fall - let's connect. We’re attending a number of industry events in the coming months. Here are three upcoming conferences where we’d love to meet.

  • DealCatalyst’s ABF 2025 Conference | Sept. 25-26, New York, NY. Book a time with our team.

  • ABS East 2025 Conference | Oct. 20-22, Miami, FL. Book time with our team.

• 🌆 Upcoming Setpoint Events:

  • Capital Conversations: After Hours — Oct. 15: Setpoint and One William Street are teaming up to host an evening of conversations, connections and cocktails in one of Manhattan’s most intimate speakeasy lounges. This is an exclusive opportunity to connect with leaders from across the asset-backed finance world. Apply to attend.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

• Aequum Capital, a specialty finance lender backed by Castlelake, closed a $250M debt facility led by Wells Fargo. 

• Atlanticus, a consumer finance platform, announced the acquisition of Mercury Financial, which has 1.3M credit card accounts serviced and $3.2B in receivables, for a cash purchase price of $162M. 

• Aven, a secured card backed by home equity, closed a $110M Series E financing at a $2.2B valuation from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, GIC, and Electric Capital. 

• Blackstone, a global asset manager, agreed to buy $869M of performing single tenant net lease financing loans from First Internet Bank. 

• Comvest Partners, a West Palm Beach-based credit fund, led a $450M NAV facility to an unnamed PE firm to support its portfolio management strategy.  

• CredibleX, a UAE-based SME lender, closed a $100M senior secured credit facility with Pollen Street Capital. 

• EarnIn, an earned wage access platform, closed a $150M senior secured credit facility to scale originations for its “Cash Out” product. 

• Figure, a blockchain-native capital markets platform and HELOC originator, completed its IPO under the “FIGR” ticker.

• Gravity Edge, a new data center operator in London, is being seeded by up to £500M from BlackRock.

• Healthcare Finance Direct, a provider of patient financing, closed a $175M financing facility with MA Asset Management alongside KeyBank as senior lender. 

• Hometap, a home equity investment platform, closed a $300M securitization collateralized by a pool of HEI assets. 

• JG Wentworth, a consumer financing services platform, completed $300M issuance of rated VFNs collateralized by structured settlements, lottery winnings, and annuity payments. 

• Kapital, a Mexico-based fintech and lending platform, raised $100M growth equity round from Tribe Capital and Pelion Ventures at a $1.3B valuation. 

• Klarna, a Sweden-based BNPL platform, completed its IPO on the NYSE under the “KLAR” ticker. 

• Lendbuzz, a consumer auto finance platform, filed its S-1. 

• Nexamp, a solar energy platform, closed a $350M debt financing with Macquarie Group to generate 6 GW of electricity. 

• NewDay, a UK-based consumer finance company, agrees to sell its portfolio of consumer credit receivables to KKR, separating NewDay’s credit balance sheet from its origination and servicing business. KKR also entered into a multi-year forward flow agreement with NewDay. 

• PayJoy, a consumer finance platform for emerging markets, announced a new investment to its PayJoy Asset Fund by accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. 

• PK AirFinance, an aviation lending platform owned by Apollo, closed a $827M ABS issuance. 

• Speedchain, a commercial card and spend management platform, closed $111M in aggregate financing - equity from a syndicate of VCs including TTV Capital and debt from CIM. 

• TAB, a UK-based bridge lender, closed a £500M funding facility with AB CarVal. 

• Tamara, a Saudi BNPL and financial services platform, closed a $2.4BShari'ah-compliant  asset-backed facility from Goldman, Citi, and Apollo to expand origination volumes. 

• Trinity Capital, an alternative asset manager, increased its credit facility by $90M to $690M in total commitments with KeyBank. 

• Vertical Bridge, the largest private owner of communications infrastructure, closed a $595.1M ABS issuance secured by a portfolio of 1,070 towers across 47 states. 

• Wisetack, an embedded platform for consumer financing, closed a new forward flow partnership with Group 1001 to purchase home services and home improvement loans originated through Wisetack’s technology.

💰️Platform Growth

• Ares is planning a credit secondaries transaction of investors stakes worth €1.5B.

• Claret Capital Partners announced the second close of its Fund IV, bringing total commitments to over €350 million.

• Gordon Brothers formed a $1.5B JV with Davidson Kempner and entered into a supporting lender finance facility with Wells Fargo Capital Finance. 

• Hayfin Capital sold a minority stake to Samsung Life Insurance, who joined Mubadala and AXA IM Prime as minority shareholders. 

• Mount Logan Capital, 180 Degree Capital announced an all-stock business combination that will operate under Mount Logan Capital and started trading on the Nasdaq under “MLCI”.

• Nuveen Private Capital, Hunter Point Capital, and Temasek entered into a strategic partnership, whereby Hunter Point and Temasek made minority investments in Nuveen Private Capital and Temasek will provide long-term capital commitments to the platform’s strategies.

• Rithm Capital announced it is acquiring Crestline Management, an alternative asset manager with $17B in AUM, bringing Rithm’s combined platform to $98B in investable assets.  

• Sagard Holdings announced a minority investment from Robrt W. Baird & Co. alongside a distribution deal where Baird will distribute Sagard funds. 

• TenFifty Capital, a new European CRE lending platform launched in partnership with Apollo.

📈 Visuals

🗣️ Market Commentary

• “With prime borrowers, we are seeing the highest levels of delinquencies in more than 10 years… at a time of generally positive economic conditions. Such a performance trend is important because it ultimately impacts how prime consumer risk is perceived, which impacts how capital is allocated. By contrast, non-prime credit has seen credit performance improvements. The second set of charts below plot the same kind of data, but for sub-prime and near-prime borrowers. Recent trends show near-prime consumers performing nearly as well as prime. Think of FICO scores as necessary but insufficient indicators of risk. They must be viewed at the intersection of the other key factors, as we will see below.” -  Joel Holsinger, Keith Ashton, Kevin Alexander, Ares Alternative Credit Team 

• “You can see clearly that the more recent mortgage vintages (2022+) have much higher (30%+) PTIs. In our view, unless and until real wages truly catch up and/or mortgage rates drop to permit refinancings, we are likely to continue to see a link between these consumers’ higher PTI / RTI stats and weaker credit performance.”  -  Joel Holsinger, Keith Ashton, Kevin Alexander, Ares Alternative Credit Team 

• “The vast majority of both new and existing ABF funds are smaller funds with less than $1 billion of capital. As ABF strategies tend to create portfolios of at least 20-30 investments, these sub-$1bn funds are, by definition, targeting transactions under $50mm (and more typically $10-30mm). As we can tell you from experience, the fiercest competition we see is on the “small cap” side of the ABF market where there is the most overlapping demand. That limited “bite size” does not necessarily preclude smaller funds from investing in larger deals. It simply means that smaller funds must “club up” or participate alongside many other smaller funds on those larger opportunities.”  -  Joel Holsinger, Keith Ashton, Kevin Alexander, Ares Alternative Credit Team 

• “One interesting canary in the coal mine that has not been materially recognized is the health of the consumer. And we’’re seeing delinquencies in unsecured obligations increase materially. We’re seeing tremendous pressure in places like the subprime auto market. We’re seeing material and elevated amount of sales by original issue consumer lenders to buyers of charged off paper - distressed unsecured paper. That I think has not been terribly well recognized. Where you have an ever weaker consumer, you have an ever weaker buyer of goods, you have an ever less robust labor force, etc. And so I think that’s entirely consistent and a bit of a leading indicator as to where things are going.” - Dan Zwirn, CEO & CIO of Arena Investors on Health of the Consumer

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To

Reading

• Breaking New Ground: The Case for Investing in De-Novo Specialty Finance Platforms (Edgar Matthews)

• Credit Unbound: Capitalizing on a Shifting Opportunity Set (Axar Capital)

• In the Gaps: Summer 2025 (Ares)

• Kroll and StepStone Group Create Private-Credit Benchmarks Service (WSJ)

• Mutual Fund Titans Plowed Into Private Markets. It Isn’t Working (Bloomberg)

• Subprime Lender Tricolor to Liquidate Amid Fraud Allegations (Bloomberg)

Podcasts & Interviews

• Arad Levertov, CEO of Sunbit, on creating an offline BNPL Lender (Fintech One-on-One)

• Brookfield’s Flatt on Insurance, Private Markets, and AI (Bloomberg)

• Educating Specialty Lenders with Scalable Debt, with Rob McGregor of Coromandel Capital (Credit Clubhouse)

• Stonepeak’s Luke Taylor - What it Takes to Be a Great Infrastructure Investor (Alt Goes Mainstream)

• The Health of the Consumer is the Canary in the Coal Mine, with Dan Zwirn (Credit Exchange)