Oaktree Capital investing $250M in parallel-economy credit card Coign

Investment giant Oaktree Capital has struck a $250 million deal with Coign, a conservative-focused credit card company, marking one of the largest institutional investments in the so-called parallel economy, NYNext has learned.The parallel economy has gained traction in recent years as conservatives seek products aligned with their values.While companies like Coign have built a foothold, they’ve largely lacked recognition from major financial institutions.

Oaktree Capital, founded by billionaire Howard Marks, signals that this movement is increasingly attracting even typically apolitical investors.In a statement to investors reviewed by NYNext, Coign announced, “The $250 million partnership with Oaktree provides a debt facility to scale our super-prime credit card portfolio and launch non-prime cards.”Chris Gray, Managing Director at Oaktree Capital, added that Coign is “well positioned to be a significant growth story in fintech.”I called up Coign’s founder and CEO Rob Collins to ask about the deal and he said Oaktree’s involvement underscores just how significant the American market of 120 million conservatives is.According to Coign’s materials, conservatives are both the largest and wealthiest affinity groups in the US and thus far they’ve only been given the option of using credit cards that donate overwhelmingly to liberal causes (the top credit card companies have given more than $2 billion to Democratic causes, according to a report in the Washington Times).“More and more people are recognizing how well conservative movies and media are doing … that extends to our industry,” Collins said.Conservative products particularly have a strong word-of-mouth element and engender serious loyalty from customers.That is all to Coign’s benefit — the card already has tens of thousands of members in every state and a waitlist over 110,000 more as the company builds up capacity.And perhaps most interestingly, the churn for this credit card is ju...