Mosaic is six years old, and we’ve got a lot to celebrate! Since our early days as a solar crowdfunding pioneer, Mosaic has gone on to become a leading provider of home solar loans in America – and helped nearly 100,000 households go solar through our financing platform in the process.
To mark the occasion, we’ve launched the next generation of home solar loans: PowerSwitch 6. And like Mosaic itself, our financing products have evolved a lot over the past six years while remaining true to our founding vision: 100% clean energy for all.
Here’s how PowerSwitch 6 gets us further along on both halves of that equation – the “100% clean energy,” and the “for all.” And if you’re a contractor that wants to help us make that vision a reality by offering your customers simple, fast financing through an industry leader, apply to become a Mosaic partner.
100% Clean Energy-Powered Modern Homes
When it comes to turning your house into a modern, 100% clean energy-powered dream home, there are two sides to consider: energy supply and energy demand. Going solar puts a 100% renewable, zero-carbon electricity-generating power plant right on your roof, but in many cases solar alone won’t generate enough to meet all of your electricity needs.
Getting all the way to 100% clean energy usually also entails minimizing your electricity demand by investing in your home’s energy efficiency. Energy efficient home improvements can take a number of forms, from insulation, caulking, and windows to new technologies like smart thermostats. It might also require a new roof for those solar panels!
With this in mind, PowerSwitch 6 offers one-stop financing for investments in both solar and energy efficient home improvements. The PowerSwitch PLUS loan product can cover a wide range of energy-related investments while offering options for 10, 15, and 20 year loan terms – longer than typical home improvement loans that homeowners might otherwise rely on. PLUS can finance:
- Solar: Like previous generations of Mosaic’s PowerSwitch financing, PowerSwitch PLUS offers an industry-leading home solar loan that covers all equipment and installation costs with a variety of options for terms and the ability for a homeowner to bring down their monthly payment after 18 months by pre-paying a portion of the principal during that timeframe.
- Re-roofing: Solar panels have a lifespan of 20 years or more. So, if you need to get your roof replaced anytime soon, it makes sense to re-roof now and wrap it all into the same financing process.
- Energy Efficiency: Energy efficient home improvements come in all shapes and sizes – and they can increase the savings on your monthly electricity bill even more than solar alone.
- Batteries: Home battery systems work with your solar panels to ensure that you have solar power on demand even when the sun isn’t shining – or when the grid is down.
By going beyond just solar, the PowerSwitch PLUS loan product inaugurates the next generation of flexible, all-in-one financing products needed to create the modern, 100% clean energy home.
Clean Energy Prosperity “For All,” Including Contractors
When it comes to Mosaic’s mission, “For All” is just as important as “100% Clean Energy.” By making solar and energy efficient home improvement financing simpler, faster, and more accessible for both homeowners and our contractor partners, we want to ultimately empower millions of everyday people to prosper from clean energy.
PowerSwitch 6 includes a pair of innovations that aim to make our loans more accessible to homeowners:
- Combined Household Income: PowerSwitch 6 allows homeowners to use total verifiable household income to qualify for loans, an innovation that is unique in the solar industry. Many households rely on multiple residents to pay the bills; applicants can leverage this feature to combine those incomes, expanding the number of households that benefit from Mosaic’s solar financing.
- Soft Credit Checks: PowerSwitch 6 also uses soft credit checks to pre-approve applicants early in the process. Soft checks don’t negatively impact credit scores, which increases comfort levels for potential customer with concerns about their FICO scores – and improves contractor time management.
Building a prosperous clean energy economy isn’t just about homeowners going solar – it’s also about helping great clean energy businesses grow. There are nearly 250,000 workers employed full-time in the solar industry, and many of them are contractors at solar installation companies that rely on Mosaic’s financing solutions to expand their customer base.
We’re always talking to our contractor partners about ways to improve our products, and PowerSwitch 6 includes several innovations that will help streamline processing and improve cashflow:
- Simple milestones: Easy milestone evidence for qualified contractors simplifies how to validate that disbursements should take place, regardless of which jurisdiction the homeowner is in.
- Daily funding: Mosaic now processes funding requests on a daily basis, which will cut the time between the contractor submitting milestone evidence and the installer receiving the funding to 1-2 business days after submitting milestone evidence.
- Early disbursements: Qualified contractors can now receive final loan disbursement at the time of installation, further improving cash flow.
The cumulative impact of these improvements will help give our contractor partners an edge in a highly-competitive industry.
Experience Counts: Partner With a Solar Leader
Beyond being highly competitive, the solar industry is also changing quickly, with new technologies, new consumer expectations, and new policies at the state and federal levels. As a leader in creating financially sustainable solar loan products, Mosaic has years of experience as well as strong backing from capital markets, ensuring that we will be there for our contractors partners for the long term.
Are you a contractor interesting in offering fast, simple solar and energy efficient home improvement financing for your customers?
In the words of our co-founder and CEO Billy Parish:
“the PowerSwitch 6 suite will help us bring affordable solar to homeowners across the country for years to come.”
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