Announcing the Underwriting for Racial Justice Lender Pilot Program
Beneficial State Foundation is excited to invite U.S.-based lenders interested in increasing their lending to people of color to apply to participate in the Underwriting for Racial Justice Lender Pilot Program.
We are inviting innovative lenders that have, or would like to start, a loan program with underwriting protocols designed to increase access for people of color. The program will allow lenders to convene, share, and learn with fellow lenders doing similar work. This program is particularly helpful for banks that have made racial justice commitments and are seeking meaningful, tangible, and impactful ways to implement these commitments.
Program elements:
- Community of Practice with peer lenders
- Tools, templates, and training
- State-of-the-art predictive analytics and credit decision management platform
- Regulatory collaboration
- Ongoing sharing of individual lender and peer group results
- Documentation of challenges, learnings, and successes for participating lenders
- Dissemination of findings and promotion of participating lenders to catalyze industry-wide impact
- Group training, peer feedback, and individual consultation support
- Two-year program
Lender eligibility:
We will accept up to 20 lenders to participate in the program. Lenders must meet the following criteria:
- U.S. based
- Has started or will start a loan program with new underwriting standards to increase access for people of color
- Able to participate in monthly peer Community of Practice sessions
- Able to provide pre, post, and quarterly loan data
- Willing to participate in lender surveys and interviews
- Support from the institution’s Executive, Credit, and Risk/Compliance leadership teams
Does this sound like your institution?
Catalyzing Racial Justice Together
The financial industry can help close the racial wealth gap and has a responsibility to help move our country to full racial and economic justice. To catalyze industry-wide change, it takes committed people and institutions working together to learn, un-learn, test, and share their experiences to improve outcomes for all. It takes lenders of all types — banks, credit unions, CDFIs, mortgage lenders — and people of all races and ethnicities to come together to do this work. If this sounds like you and your institution, we invite you to apply to be a central part of this critical work!
Read about the program in these articles:
To learn more and apply
Have questions?
Register for one of our pre-application Q&A sessions:
Tuesday, March 7 1:30 PT / 2:30 MT / 3:30 CT / 4:30 ET
Wednesday, March 15 9am PT / 10 am MT / 11 am CT / 12pm ET
Thursday, April 6 11am PT / 12pm MT / 1pm CT / 2 pm ET
And feel free to reach out to Elsie Howard at ehoward@beneficialstate.org anytime!
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About Beneficial State Foundation
Beneficial State Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to advance financial justice and impactful systemic change in our communities and in the banking system. The foundation is the founding investor of Beneficial State Bank, a triple-bottom-line certified Community Development Financial Institution, and the administrator of the Clean Vehicle Assistance Program which provides grants and affordable financing to help income-qualified Californians purchase clean vehicles. https://beneficialstate.org/
About the Underwriting for Racial Justice working group
Beneficial State Foundation regularly convenes a national working group of underwriters, impact leaders at financial institutions, regulators, innovators in alternative underwriting, and borrowers of color from across the country to develop solutions to increase credit access to people rising from longstanding systemic inequities and barriers, particularly those from BIPOC communities. https://beneficialstate.org/urj/
Erin Kilmer Neel | Executive Director + Chief Impact Officer
O: 510–463–6569
1438 Webster St., Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94612
beneficial state foundation | Visit our impact website!