Customer: Slope
Industry: B2B Payments & Embedded Lending
Key People: Russell Gu (Head of Credit Risk), Nick Heins (Head of Capital Markets)
Solution: Intelligent Financial Spreading API

Introduction

Slope is on a mission to transform B2B payments by enabling businesses to offer seamless, embedded financing. But delivering real-time credit decisions while preserving analytical depth is no easy feat—especially when underwriting SMBs with complex or non-standard financials.

To stay ahead, Slope partnered with Accend which has quickly evolved into a core part of their credit decisioning stack.

‍

The Challenge

Slope’s credit team, led by Russell Gu, was facing the classic underwriting dilemma: how to maintain high-quality credit analysis without slowing down the lending experience.

‍

“Some of our decisions require reviewing financial statements, and these are generally high-stakes decisions. We want to get back to the customer as quickly as we can—without compromising on quality,”
— Russell Gu, Head of Credit Risk at Slope.

‍

The reality was messier:

• Applicants submitted a mix of tax forms, audited reports, and internal financials
  
  
• Formats varied dramatically from year to year
  
  
• Manual reviews were slow, error-prone, and a major bottleneck
  
  

But legacy solutions weren’t keeping up. Many returned unstructured spreadsheets after long delays—often 24+ hours—making them difficult to integrate into an AI/ML-powered decision framework.

‍

Slope needed consistency, structure, and speed.

‍

The Accend Solution

That’s where Accend stepped in.

Accend’s human-in-the-loop AI platform transforms any financial document—PDFs, tax forms, internal statements—into structured, ready-to-analyze data. For Slope, this meant year-over-year comparability and credit insights were suddenly just hours away, not days.

“Accend’s solution ingested and standardized financials across formats and years. We could finally trust the data and make decisions faster and more confidently,” said Gu.

‍

With an API-first design, Accend fit seamlessly into Slope’s decisioning engine. And with blazing-fast turnaround, it didn’t just improve underwriting—it unlocked a better customer experience.

‍

“With Accend, we can get spreading results back within two hours. That’s amazing when we want to move a deal forward quickly,”
Russell Gu added.

‍

The Impact

What followed was a step-change in efficiency and credit operations:

✅ 4x faster financial reviews
✅ 80% reduction in manual effort
✅ Significant lift in underwriting confidence and throughput

‍

“Accend offers the best solution for data-driven credit teams looking to maximize insights from financial documents,. If eheir API solution and onshore time zone support accelerated our financial reviews by more than 4x.”
— Russell Gu, Head of Credit Risk at Slope.

‍
“With Accend, we were able to not only find significant time savings with over 80% reduction in manual effort required, but also provide a superior experience to our customers.”
— Nick Heins, Slope’s Head of Capital Markets, added this ^.

‍

Why It Matters

Speed matters in lending. And for Slope’s SMB customers, fast decisions are often the difference between growth and stagnation.

“They’re running companies. They don’t want to wait days for a decision,” said Gu. “The sooner we respond, the sooner we can build trust and grow the relationship.”

‍

Accend’s ability to handle financial complexity—combined with its product velocity and support—gave Slope a powerful competitive edge in embedded finance.

‍

“Accend keeps shipping—even without us asking. They’ve built industry-leading features that are incredibly intuitive,” Gu said.

‍

A True Partnership

Beyond speed and data fidelity, Slope found a true partner in Accend.

‍

“The team at Accend responds fast, is open to feedback, and is constantly innovating—sometimes even ahead of our suggestions. That’s what makes them a long-term partner,” Gu emphasized.

‍

Looking Ahead

‍

“Any financial institution that requires reviewing financial statements should look at Accend. It accelerates decision-making while preserving quality. And this space hasn’t seen real innovation in years,” Gu concluded.

‍

For a rapidly scaling platform like Slope, Accend became more than just a vendor. It became an extension of the credit team—one that delivered fast, reliable insights exactly when they were needed.

‍

‍