Social impact fintech SpringFour acquired by debt recovery firm

A financial wellness fintech with several big-name bank clients has been acquired by a debt recovery firm.

On Wednesday, SpringFour — whose CEO and founder Rochelle Nawrocki Gorey was named one of American Banker's Most Influential Women in Fintech in 2024 — said it would become part of C&R Software, a firm that provides debt recovery and collections software to banks, utilities, telecom, healthcare, government and fintechs. SpringFour, which partners with banks, credit unions, lenders, nonprofits and more to help them deliver vetted financial resources to their customers at no cost, will remain a standalone brand with Nawrocki Gorey at the helm. Examples could be nonprofits that distribute free or discounted food, programs to save on prescription medicine, reduced-cost therapy or down payment and closing cost grants for prospective home-buyers.

The two entities first made contact in December 2023. 

C&R and SpringFour expect that C&R's extensive client base will mean more distribution opportunities for SpringFour's services, which include four delivery methods that its clients can use to refer employment, food savings and other financial health resources to their end users. 

The acquisition may also widen the scope of what C&R can offer. The firm has made about a half-dozen acquisitions to expand use cases upstream to loan originations, loan servicing, and fraud resolution. 

"SpringFour aligns well with our mission to humanize collections effort in periods of financial difficulty," said Ed Wallen, CEO of C&R Software, in an interview. "SpringFour helps customers in need regain financial footing, meet their obligations, help banks avoid write-offs, and eventually [help banks] offer new credit products."

Nawrocki Gorey said she was "not necessarily" looking to sell her company, but the growth potential excited her. 

"We know that by aligning with C&R and Constellation [Software, the parent company of CORA Group, the parent of C&R] we will be able to bring SpringFour to more organizations and more consumers," she said. "It will be the rocket fuel to help boost us into more people's financial lives."

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SpringFour counts Capital One Financial, BMO Financial Group, M&T Bank, Fifth Third Bancorp, KeyCorp and consumer lender OppFi among its customers. Nawrocki Gorey expects that as a subsidiary of C&R, SpringFour will be able to penetrate other markets such as utilities and government — as either a customer or employee resource — more easily than it could on its own. 

"C&R has a large number of banks already onboarded," Wallen said. "It will allow Rochelle and her team to ride on the backs of those master service agreements we already have in place."

Nawrocki Gorey said current customers will not notice any difference in operations. 

The two firms declined to disclose the sale price, but Wallen said Constellation Software is on track to deploy more than $2.5 billion in capital toward its acquisitions this year.