Discover an MBA program designed to offer you an experience customized to fit your busy lifestyle and career goals while delivering a world-class education.
The Penn State online MBA, led by the Smeal College of Business, in partnership with Black School of Business, Penn State Behrend; Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies; and Penn State Harrisburg School of Business Administration, focuses on business strategies, collaborative teamwork, strategic leadership, and an integrative and interactive curriculum across all functional areas of business. You will be able to concentrate on the functional areas in which you want to specialize while working at a pace that works for you.
The Penn State Experience Online
As a student in the online MBA, you will receive the same educational support as our residential MBA students. The MBA program team consists of expert full-time faculty, a top-ranked Penn State World Campus Technical Support team, experienced career advisers, and highly qualified administrative staff. The team provides personal assistance and advice in regard to your academic plan and career goals throughout your time as a Penn State student.
Penn State Online MBA Program
Led by the Smeal College of Business and in partnership with business programs across Penn State’s commonwealth campuses, the online MBA from Penn State World Campus is designed to deliver course content in an integrated fashion. The curriculum is interactive, engaging, and flexible.
Whether you’re looking to buy a new or used car, or even want to refinance your auto loan from another lender, we’re here to help. We offer auto loans with great rates, 100% financing and exclusive military discounts,1 often with decisions in seconds. Check out how much you can save—you’ll finally stop dreaming and start driving.
Xperience Our Car Buying Center
Our fully loaded Car Buying Center has everything you need to finance, buy, research, protect and enjoy your next car—all in one place.
Plus, you could enjoy great savings through exclusive member benefits3 from TrueCar®, CARFAX®4, Liberty Mutual®5 and SiriusXM.
From start to finish, Navy Federal has everything you need to finance, buy, research, protect and enjoy your next car.
Whenever you’re ready, you can find resources and guidance to help you make a wise car-buying decision. Plus, you could get a great deal all-around—excellent loan rate and car price, vehicle history reports, and discounts on insurance and in-car entertainment packages. You can feel more relaxed as you buy your next car, knowing we’ve got the options you want—all in one place.
Auto Navigator: Disrupting Car Buying for the Sake of the Customer
By Sanjiv Yajnik, President of Financial Services, Capital One
At the 2018 SXSW Interactive Festival, we’re giving festival-goers a sneak peek into how we are applying human-centred design, forward-leaning, immersive technology, deep auto industry expertise, and innovative partnerships to reimagine the car-shopping process.
The Problem
Do you remember how much time you spent in the dealership when you bought your last car? Did you walk out, keys in hand, feeling fully confident in your purchase?
When it comes to big life decisions, 50% of people report researching and buying a car is more time-consuming than deciding where to go to college and choosing a baby name, according to a recent survey commissioned by Capital One. In addition, 62% of car buyers are not fully confident they got a great deal the last time they bought a car. To add to that, 78% of Americans admit the last time they bought a car, they lost confidence that they would get the car they wanted during the shopping process.
We asked ourselves why something as exciting as buying a new car needs to be fraught with this much anxiety. What we realized as we dug deeper into the car-shopping process, is that some people are left discouraged, realizing the payments are (much) more than they expected because the total cost of ownership is larger than the price of the car. But oftentimes they don’t know this at the beginning of the shopping process, when they set their hearts on a particular car. Then what? Is it back to the drawing board? Do they start over, or settle for something outside of their budget?
The Solution
These customer pain points proved to be a problem that we wanted to solve for, so, in 2015, Capital One introduced the first version of Auto Navigator, a cloud-based web application built on a micro services architecture and powered by a suite of technologies, including machine learning.
This development simplified the car shopping process for customers — allowing them to find, finance and fulfill their next car purchase with ease, convenience and confidence.
With our second iteration, introduced just a year later in 2016, customers could browse more than three million cars from over 12,000 participating dealers across the country! We leveraged real-time data, which allowed us to determine how much customers would pay for any of the cars in our database for any of the combinations they choose (e.g., cash down, terms, etc.). More importantly, customers could now pre-qualify for financing with no impact to their credit score before ever stepping into a dealership.
Since inception, we have iterated on Auto Navigator, implementing human-centered design where we use empathy listening, observation techniques and rapid prototyping with customers in order to continuously build, fail forward and fast and improve our customer experience.
What’s Next in this Disruptive Journey?
We are in this business to challenge the market for the sake of the customer. At SXSW, we’re previewing the latest evolution of Auto Navigator in the form of a new functionality:
Augmented Reality Feature: We have realized that car research is a constant process that customers are engaged in, even when they are not actively looking to buy a car. In the coming months, we plan to offer an augmented reality experience to our customers through the Capital One Mobile app, allowing them to scan cars via their mobile phones to view individualized information related to each car. This could include information such as their pre-qualified financing, their estimated monthly payment, nearby dealerships where they could buy the car, and much more. Imagine customers being able to get access to this type of individualized information at the point of need, real-time!
The Tech Behind It
Upon launch, the Augmented Reality feature will leverage Apple’s recently-announced augmented reality framework (ARKit) and their new mobile machine learning framework (CoreML) as well as Capital One proprietary models to identify and price cars. The feature is also compatible with Android, using ARCore and Tensorflow mobile.
ARKit enables us to detect surfaces and planes and create a 3D scene that we can then use to place our AR assets, while CoreML allows us to take images from the video stream and pass them through our Convolutional Neural Network to get predictions about the vehicle. We’ve optimized the experience so customers can scan multiple cars in a session, and get more information about a car they’ve already scanned (even after scanning several). We then utilize Capital One’s proprietary models to customize the offer so they can see their estimated monthly payment.
Empowering people to feel confident about their relationship with their money is at the heart of what we’re doing, and with Auto Navigator, we’ve found a way to do this while providing an ultimate digital experience that fits more naturally into people’s lives.
LoanBuilder issues short-term business loans. While many other business financiers offer similar funding, LoanBuilder stands out from the pack for a few reasons: the loans are relatively inexpensive, borrowers don’t have to pay an origination fee (or any other upfront fees), and borrower requirements are low.
HOW IS LOANBUILDER DIFFERENT FROM PAYPAL LOAN?
LoanBuilder and PayPal Business Loans are one and the same. In fact, you may notice that when you begin the application questionnaire, the service is called PayPal Business Loan instead of LoanBuilder. At one point there had been plans to phase out the LoanBuilder brand name, but that hasn’t happened yet.
HOW IS LOANBUILDER DIFFERENT FROM PAYPAL WORKING CAPITAL?
PayPal Working Capital is another business loan service offered by LoanBuilder’s parent company. Like LoanBuilder, PayPal Working Capital provides short-term business loans.
PayPal Working Capital is a useful tool, but it’s only available to PayPal sellers. By contrast, LoanBuilder can be used by most businesses — PayPal sellers or otherwise. LoanBuilder also offers higher possible borrowing amounts, and the amount merchants can borrow is based on the business’s entire revenue (not just its PayPal sales). Check out the next section to see if you have a good chance to qualify for a LoanBuilder loan.
LOANBUILDER BORROWER REQUIREMENTS
LoanBuilder has pretty relaxed borrower qualifications, but its list of ineligible industries is rather lengthy and includes attorneys, nonprofits, financial services, and others. Below are the minimum requirements your business must meet to have a good chance of qualifying for a LoanBuilder loan:
Time In Business:
9 months
Business Revenue:
$42,000 per year
Personal Credit Score:
620
Ineligible Industries (click to expand)
Your business must also be based in the United States. Additionally, you must not have any active bankruptcies.
LOANBUILDER INTEREST RATES & FEES
Rating: Good
Here are the current rates and fees for LoanBuilder loans:
Borrowing Amount:
$5,000-$500,000
Term Length:
13-52 weeks
Borrowing Fee:
One-time fee of 2.9%-18.72% of the borrowing amount
LoanBuilder loans are available up to $500,000 for qualified borrowers. LoanBuilder rates are one-time fees ranging from 2.9% to 18.72% of the borrowing amount. While no specific collateral is required to qualify, a blanket lien is required as a condition of receiving a LoanBuilder business loan.
LoanBuilder borrowing fees are usually not too high. However, the loans have relatively short repayment terms, making for large weekly payments.
LoanBuilder expresses the cost of the loan as a Total Interest Percentage. Determining your borrowing fee is easy — simply multiply the Total Interest Percentage by the borrowing amount. For example, if you are borrowing $100,000 and you have an interest percentage of 10%, you will have a borrowing fee of $10,000. In total, you would have to repay $110,000. Note: the Total Interest Percentage is notthe same thing as an interest rate or APR. Unlike interest, which accrues over the life of the loan, LoanBuilder’s borrowing fees are only calculated once and stay the same for the loan term.
Notably, LoanBuilder does not charge an origination (or similar) fee, so you won’t have anything deducted from the amount of money you receive. Aside from potential late or NSF fees, the fixed borrowing fee is the only fee you will be charged. As for LoanBuilder’s borrowing fees, they are not expensive, but they’re not the cheapest either, and could potentially be as high as 18.72% of the borrowing amount. The repayment term is pretty short, with a maximum term of 52 weeks, which means that it’s not a viable long-term financing option, and each weekly repayment will be significant.
Repayment is hands-off. Each week, LoanBuilder will deduct a fixed amount from your business bank account via an automated clearing house (ACH). It’s worth mentioning that many of LoanBuilder’s competitors withdraw payments daily, making LoanBuilder’s system a little easier than most to plan for. You can pay the loan off early without penalty if you choose, but unfortunately, there’s no monetary benefit to doing so.
LoanBuilder does not require any specific collateral, but like many online lenders, LoanBuilder does require a UCC-1 blanket lien.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Rating: Excellent
LoanBuilder has a quick and easy application process.
The first step is to fill out an online prequalification form. You can choose to sign in using your PayPal account (in which case LoanBuilder will already have some of your information) or as a guest. The application has five steps: Contact Info, Personal Info, Business Location, Business Details, and Verify Identity. In all, LoanBuilder advertises that this form only takes five to ten minutes to complete.
Here is the type of information you’ll have to provide in each step (note that the information might vary based on your type of business):
The first step is Contact Info, in which you must supply contact information, such as your name, email address, phone number, and intended use of the loan proceeds.
Next is Personal Info, in which you must supply your home address and personal phone numbers.
For Business Location, you will have to submit your business address and business phone numbers.
For Business Details, you’ll supply relevant information, such as your business entity type, trade name or DBA, state of incorporation, annual business revenue, business start date, number of full-time employees, and business industry and sub-industry.
On the final section of the loan application, Verify Identity, you will include information such as your date of birth, SSN, what percentage of the business you own, and your federal tax ID. LoanBuilder will use this information to perform a soft pull on your credit, which will give the lender a sense of your credit history. Supplying this information will not affect your personal credit score.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I APPLY ONLINE?
On submitting the application, LoanBuilder will let you know if you’ve been approved to continue the process or not. To determine eligibility, LoanBuilder evaluates your business’s financials and overall health as well as your personal credit history. If preapproved, you will receive estimated rates and fees, and you will be able to customize your borrowing amount and term length.
When you have settled on your terms, you will have to complete a full application. The documentation required varies based on your business’s situation, but you should expect to submit various documents, such as recent bank statements. In this stage, LoanBuilder will perform a hard check on your credit, which might have a small impact on your credit score. If approved for a loan, you must electronically sign a contract before receiving your funds.
I GOT A LOAN FROM LOANBUILDER. NOW WHAT?
On approval, WebBank (the bank responsible for originating LoanBuilder loans) will deposit the funds into your bank account. If your loan is approved before 5 PM EDT on Monday through Friday, the funds will generally transfer the next business day. If you are approved later than 5 PM, or during a weekend, the transfer might take a little longer.
To repay, LoanBuilder will automatically deduct payments every week. You will be able to choose the day of the week on which payments are withdrawn.
LOANBUILDER DECLINED MY LOAN. NOW WHAT?
If your loan gets declined, LoanBuilder will let you know immediately, and it will follow up via email a few days later with additional details and reasons. Applicants who didn’t qualify can try again after 30 days have passed.
SALES & ADVERTISING TRANSPARENCY
Rating: Fair
Over the past two years, LoanBuilder has sharply cut back on the amount of information it provides upfront to prospective borrowers. There’s still an FAQ that provides some general information about how Loanbuilder works, but you won’t find much information about rates and precise terms. The PayPal Business Loan page provides the same information in a slightly different format.
You can check your eligibility quickly by filling out a questionnaire, but this requires you to submit contact information.
CUSTOMER SERVICE & TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Rating: Good
Customer service is available by phone Monday through Saturday. Support is also reachable via email and social media. There is no live chat feature, however.
Though customers in the past have complained about the difficulty of reaching a customer support representative, LoanBuilder appears to have taken great pains to improve its customer service experience, and most recent reviews of the company’s customer experience are positive.
LOANBUILDER REVIEWS, COMPLAINTS, & TESTIMONIALS
Rating: Good
NEGATIVE REVIEWS & COMPLAINTS
As a PayPal service, it’s difficult to disambiguate PayPal’s loan services from all their other operations. Before being absorbed by PayPal, LoanBuilder was a product of Swift Capital. Swift Capital’s Better Business Bureau profile is still where a lot of complaints about LoanBuilder seem to go on the BBB site, so it’s worth looking there if you don’t want to sift through hundreds of PayPal complaints. Swift Capital isn’t accredited with the BBB, but has an A+ rating on the site with 21 complaints closed in the last 3 years. It also has a healthy presence on Trustpilot with a 4.7/5 score with 5,336 reviews. Still, there are some negative reviews out there. Here’s a rundown of the complaints against this service:
Unforeseen Roadblocks: Some customers, either due to miscommunication or mishap, said the application and funding experience turned out to be more complicated than anticipated.
Confusing Terms: Though sometimes due to unfamiliarity with short-term loan terminology, some customers found themselves unprepared to meet the terms.
Short Repayment Terms: Repayment must take place in a maximum of 12 months. That’s not a long time. The weekly repayments will be much higher than they would be if you got a more extensive term length.
Inflexible: Some complaints focused on the inflexibility of LoanBuilder’s terms when they ran into difficulty meeting the payment schedule.
COVID-related Issues: Many of the more recent complaints involve difficulties repaying during the 2020-2021 global pandemic, as well as confusion surrounding PPP applications.
POSITIVE REVIEWS & TESTIMONIALS
LoanBuilder has several testimonials on its website, a lot of positive reviews on Trustpilot, and a few positive experiences on the BBB. Customers usually like the following:
Fast Time To Funding: Despite the costs of doing so, being able to get capital fast has its virtues.
Helpful Customer Service: For the most part, customers appear to be satisfied with the service and support offered.
Weekly Repayment Terms:Most MCA and short-term loan providers deduct a portion of your sales every day. For many businesses, weekly deductions are much easier to handle.
Transparent Fees: LoanBuilder has few surprises as far as fees go, which is somewhat rare for this type of product.
FINAL VERDICT
LoanBuilder’s loans are fast, easy, and a little more flexible than your average fintech business loan. PayPal’s move away from transparency over the last two years is puzzling, and definitely a step in the wrong direction, but the service remains among the better short-term loan offerings out there.
While some borrowers might want to look for a loan with longer repayment term lengths, LoanBuilder has a lot to offer the right type of business. In other words, if your business needs a short-term infusion of capital, or you can’t qualify for financing elsewhere, LoanBuilder is worth including in your comparisons.
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