CDFI Technology Landscape Scan: Key Themes from Technology Providers
Fund Community Institute
First published July 2024
In recent years, the Covid pandemic highlighted the need for quality technology solutions. In conversations with both technology providers and CDFI practitioners, Fund CI has heard story after story of how technology was a major differentiator at the start of the pandemic – were CDFIs able to transition quickly to a virtual environment? Were lenders able to adapt quickly to launch Covid response products and/or Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans? Beyond the Covid crisis, the ability to adapt to changing technology environment continues to be a differentiator as CDFIs seek efficiencies to better leverage their staff; buildout online options to interface with clients; compete with online lenders; adapt to new opportunities; etc. Other researchers have documented the benefits of embracing technology for CDFIs. In particular, the Urban Institute’s Leveraging Technology to Scale up Small Business Lending provides an in-depth and thorough overview.
Fund CI entered this research with the observation that both the CDFI industry and the technologies that support them are changing. CDFIs continue to evolve new products and approaches to meeting their missions. But, in an ever-changing environment, how can CDFIs identify the best platform, or platforms, to meet their needs? To tackle this question, Fund CI conducted interviews with 15 technology providers to learn more about their platforms.
The interviews are compiled into a series of profiles, presented with the intent of these profiles is to introduce technology providers from an ever-changing landscape. Our initial set of profiles is not comprehensive of all providers, though we welcome other technology providers to join our landscape analyses.
These interviews also allowed us to learn more about how technology providers interact with the CDFI industry, and vice versa. Fund CI sought to explore how technology providers are responding to the evolving environment and how they can help to create efficiencies. Advances in technology, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) are entering everyday use in a range of ways and are much on the news. Through the interviews, we also explore what trends in technologies will most likely affect CDFIs.
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