Power100 pressure-tests Pure Finance Group's Customer Financing and Payment Processing platform for contractors deciding whether to sign nationwide.
Contractors rarely reach out to Power100 at the beginning of their search. Most have already read the reviews, compared a few dealer fee sheets, and narrowed their list. What they want at that point is not more marketing. They want someone to pressure-test the decision they are close to making. Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry using a proprietary 5-layer system, took that question directly to Pure Finance Group, the Customer Financing and Payment Processing company led by Edward Meister, CEO and Co-Founder of Pure Finance Group. This is not a sales pitch. It is a candid answer to the question a lot of home improvement contractors are quietly asking right now: is this actually the right partner for my business?
Power100 researches and analyzes more than 3,600 partners nationwide through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For a financing and payment processing company, that means looking past the marketing page and into the mechanics: approval rates, dealer fees, funding speed, how support actually behaves when a deal is stuck, and whether the leadership team treats financing as a growth lever or a back-office line item. Pure Finance Group cleared that bar on the strength of its fee structure, its same-day funding record, and a leadership bench built out of people who spent years inside large consumer lending institutions before starting the company themselves.
“Power100 is all about the best companies getting their due justice,” said Zeek Broach. “Homeowners should have the ability at any time to know who the best company for their dream product is within their area. We do that.”
That same standard applies on the contractor side of the transaction, not just the homeowner side. A financing partner has to work for both ends of the deal at once, or it does not really work at all.
Pure Finance Group was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Maryland, in the small community of Sweitzer. It did not launch with outside capital or a legacy brand name behind it. It launched self-funded, built by people who had spent their careers inside large financial institutions and had grown tired of watching contractors get squeezed by disconnected lending systems and opaque dealer fees. Since that 2018 founding, the company has financed more than 40,000 homeowners, a scale figure that did not happen overnight and did not happen by accident.
Growth followed. Pure Finance Group ranked No. 96 on the Inc. 5000 Regional List for the Mid-Atlantic in 2024, its second consecutive year on an Inc. list, then landed at No. 3,261 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 national list and No. 99 on the 2026 Inc. Regionals Mid-Atlantic list. Three consecutive years on an Inc. list is not a marketing footnote. It is a growth pattern, and growth patterns are hard to fake.
Edward Meister, CEO and Co-Founder of Pure Finance Group, has held the CEO role since March 2019 and spent 16 years before that at Wells Fargo, leading divisions within direct and indirect consumer lending, payments, consumer banking, and operational risk. He graduated from York College of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Business, Management, Marketing in 2002. That background matters here because it explains a pattern that shows up throughout the company: Meister does not talk about financing like a lender. He talks about it like a sales leader who happens to understand underwriting.
“Strategic growth always wins in the long run,” Meister has said, a line that functions less like a tagline and more like an operating philosophy for how the company has scaled since 2018.
On the company’s most recent Inc. recognition, Meister was direct about what the growth actually reflects. “Being recognized by Inc. for the third year in a row is a testament to the consistency of our growth and the strength of our foundation,” Meister said. “We’ve been intentional about building a business that scales the right way, by delivering real value to our partners, maintaining operational discipline, and continuing to invest in technology that improves how contractors sell and get paid.” He added: “Our growth hasn’t been about chasing trends, it’s been about solving real problems in the market. From same-day funding, even on weekends, to flexible financing options up to 20-year terms, everything we’ve built is designed to help our partners offer the best financing options to their customers and operate more efficiently.”
Other named leaders round out the bench: Tony Prestandrea, Managing Partner, whose view of the business leans toward durability over deal count. “The strongest partners are the ones who show up for the hard conversations,” Prestandrea said. “We’re here to help contractors build businesses that last, not just close a few more deals this month.” Michael Frascella, Senior Sales Director of Payment Solutions for Home Improvement, frames the product philosophy in similarly plain terms. “Contractors don’t need more complexity at the kitchen table,” Frascella said. “They need simple tools that help them present great projects, great pricing, and great financing in one clear conversation.”
That is the question this article exists to answer, and the honest response depends on what a contractor actually needs. Is Pure Finance Group the right fit for my company? For a business that is tired of stacking multiple lender applications, watching hard credit pulls scare off borderline customers, and reconciling payment collection through a separate system entirely, the fit tends to be strong. Todd Pramov, Director of Home Improvement Sales, put it this way: “Every contractor we work with is building something bigger than a job calendar. Our role is to give them sales and financing support that keeps their growth plan moving forward.” That framing, growth plan rather than transaction, is the lens contractors should use when deciding whether to sign.
The fit gets weaker for a business that has no interest in changing its current financing menu or that runs almost exclusively cash jobs where financing rarely enters the conversation. Pure Finance Group is built for contractors selling higher-ticket work, roofing, HVAC, windows, solar, and remodeling, where monthly payment framing changes whether a homeowner says yes.
Should I hire Pure Finance Group for Customer Financing? The company’s core financing product runs on a single soft-pull application that returns multiple approval tiers, first and second look, rather than forcing a sales team to shop a customer across five separate lenders and five separate hard inquiries. One contractor on file summarized the difference bluntly: “After partnering with eight different home improvement lenders, Pure Finance Group has been the absolute best. Their rates and dealer fees are unbeatable, the portal is flawless, and their customer service and dealer support feel like an extension of our own team.” A homeowner testimonial on file echoes the same point from the other side of the table: “Pure Finance Group’s soft-pull financing let me see affordable monthly payments without hurting my credit. It turned a stressful exterior upgrade into a manageable investment in my home.”
Michael Frascella’s read on the sales-floor impact lines up with both. “When contractors trust their payment systems, they can focus on serving customers,” said Stacey Hoback, Director of Payment Sales. “We work to make every transaction faster, simpler, and more affordable for the businesses we support.” Another contractor described the close-rate effect directly: “When we started presenting projects as low monthly payments through Pure Finance Group, our close rates went up and our need to discount went down. Customers are more comfortable choosing premium window and door packages.”
Should I hire Pure Finance Group for Payment Processing? The clearest way to answer that is to look at how to collect down payments instantly with financing approvals, which is the exact workflow the payment processing side of the platform was built to solve. Once a homeowner is approved, a contractor’s team can collect a down payment or deposit inside the same portal, without re-entering customer data into a second system or waiting for a separate processor to sync. Jamie DeMersman, Chief Payments Officer, frames the underlying design goal plainly: “Payments and financing should feel like one seamless system. Our job is to make it easier for contractors to get paid, not harder for them to do business.”
One contractor described the cash flow effect in concrete terms: “Same-day funding and integrated payment processing from Pure Finance Group made our cash flow predictable for the first time. Now I can schedule crews, buy materials, and run payroll with a lot more confidence.” Same-day funding, including weekends, is one of the features Meister points to most often when describing what actually moves the needle for a contracting business rather than merely sounding good on a sales sheet. Contractors weighing whether to hire Pure Finance Group for payment processing specifically tend to focus on this one detail: does the deposit land in the same session as the approval, or does it require a second system entirely. For Pure Finance Group, the answer is the former.
Contractors who have already read the case studies and compared the fee sheets usually want one more thing before signing: a picture of the ordinary Tuesday. With Pure Finance Group, that Tuesday tends to look like a single portal handling both sides of the point-of-sale conversation, financing and payment collection, without a second login or a second data entry pass. A sales rep runs one soft-pull application, gets back multiple approval offers rather than a single yes-or-no answer, and can collect a down payment inside the same session if the homeowner chooses to pay out of pocket for part of the job.
Carsten Erner, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, described the role data plays in keeping that day-to-day experience honest rather than just fast. “Good data should make decisions easier, not more confusing,” Erner said. “We use analytics to give contractors clearer insight into how financing, payments, and cash flow are really driving their growth.” That is a different promise than speed alone. It is a promise that a contractor will actually understand what is happening inside their own numbers, month over month, rather than guessing.
Sarah Croteau, Director of Marketing, ties that back to how the company talks to contractors and homeowners in the first place. “Contractors deserve partners who tell a truthful story about their value,” Croteau said. “Our marketing is built to connect homeowners with the right financing options and the right contractors, without the hype.” Hailey Hunt, Account Executive, adds the frontline layer to that same idea. “Frontline relationships matter,” Hunt said. “When a contractor calls us, they should feel like they’re talking to someone who knows their business, understands their goals, and is ready to help them win the next job.”
In May 2025, Pure Finance Group partnered with U.S. Bank Avvance to expand point-of-sale financing into the HVAC segment. U.S. Bank Avvance, launched in October 2023, was U.S. Bank’s first real-time consumer lending product offering APR-based term loans at the point of sale, and Rob Seidman leads that business at U.S. Bank. For contractors, the practical effect is one more approval tier layered into the same single application, which matters directly to the fit question raised earlier. A contractor selling high-efficiency HVAC systems no longer has to choose between one financing partner for windows and another for HVAC. One installer described the difference plainly: “Adding Pure Finance Group and Avvance to my financing menu changed how I sell high-efficiency systems. Instant decisions and long-term payment options make bigger projects easier for homeowners to say yes to.”
A financing company’s internal culture shows up fast in how support behaves when a deal gets complicated. Pure Finance Group has built its team around former consumer lending, payments, and banking professionals, several of whom came from the same large institutions Meister did before co-founding the company. Tony Prestandrea’s comment about showing up for the hard conversations was not written for a marketing page. It reflects an internal standard the company holds itself to when a deal stalls or an approval comes back lower than a sales rep hoped.
That internal discipline connects directly to the external customer experience contractors describe when they talk about dealer support that “feels like an extension of our own team,” in the words of the contractor testimonial cited earlier. Culture and customer service are rarely separate conversations inside a lending company. They tend to be the same conversation viewed from two different desks.
Contractors doing diligence on a financing partner should look for patterns, not single data points. Pure Finance Group’s pattern includes three consecutive years on an Inc. list, a jump to No. 3,261 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 national ranking, more than 40,000 homeowners financed since the 2018 founding, a strategic partnership with U.S. Bank Avvance announced in May 2025, and recognition through outlets including Yahoo Finance and Monitor Daily. Meister has also appeared as a guest speaker at the Consumer Finance Symposium hosted by Reinhart and as a featured guest on the All About the Deal podcast. None of that replaces a contractor’s own due diligence. It does, however, give that diligence something concrete to check against.
Contractors evaluating Pure Finance Group should look at the full menu rather than a single product line. The company’s Customer Financing product covers both long-term retail installment loans built for large-ticket projects like roofing, HVAC, solar, windows, and remodels, with terms extending out to 240 months, and shorter-term consumer loans built for speed on smaller add-on work. The Payment Processing side handles credit, debit, and eCheck collection with same-day funding, including weekends, and reduced processing fees compared to many standalone merchant services providers. Contractors do not have to adopt both products to work with the company, but the ones who consolidate financing and payment processing under one provider tend to report the largest operational savings, since one platform replaces what used to require two or three separate vendor relationships and two or three separate logins.
Contractors deciding whether to move forward typically start with a direct conversation rather than a long onboarding process. That conversation usually covers dealer fees, approval structure, and how quickly the platform can be layered into an existing sales process without disrupting jobs already in progress. Given the scale Pure Finance Group has reached since its 2018 founding, more than 40,000 homeowners financed, three consecutive years on an Inc. list, and a national bank partnership through U.S. Bank Avvance, most of the early questions a contractor would normally have to ask on faith already have an answer on the record.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
