CREDIT BUILDERS ALLIANCE INC

Credit Builder Alliance (CBA)’s mission is helping nonprofit organizations move people from poverty to prosperity through credit building. CBA was founded for and by nonprofit lenders to fill a critical gap in the delivery of personal economic development—the ability to help individuals build a credit history. The credit report is an individual’s financial resume. It is a collection of behavioral indicators widely recognized by the mainstream financial system (i.e. credit utilization rates, payment behavior, etc.), which are used to track and predict behavior and influence access to safe and affordable mainstream financial products. Credit scores, as aggregate measures of financial behavior, are used to define the cost and access to capital and other business services (insurance, internet, merchant services, utilities).

That is why CBA’s one-of-a-kind arrangement with eight major credit bureaus is so important. It has created an opportunity for nonprofit lenders to report their loan portfolios. Only through CBA can most small- and mid-sized nonprofit lenders report loan repayments to the major consumer/commercial credit bureaus, pull credit reports and purchase credit scores for financial coaching and entrepreneur credit outcome tracking. Prior to CBA, most nonprofit lenders were not able to report directly to the credit bureaus because of threshold barriers (required portfolio size) and staff capacity concerns held by the bureaus. Since CBA’s founding in 2006, CBA has transformed nonprofit lender practices and significantly built the capacity of hundreds of nonprofit lenders to report their clients’ loan payment history to the bureaus. This has resulted in better loan payment behavior and increased credit scores for individuals, as well as improved loan portfolio quality for the nonprofit lenders.

CBA’s platform of services helps shape our members’ programs by connecting them to the credit bureaus to report loan payments and to pull reports for underwriting and financial coaching. We support practitioners through training and professional development opportunities, especially resonant these days as there are a lot of changes happening in the credit industry. We promote the replication and scale of safe and responsible credit building products and strategies, and we also advocate for consumer-friendly policies at legislative levels and within the credit industry itself.

Every CBA service, program, and task is performed in pursuit of one unified objective; to increase the capacity of nonprofit organizations to effectively support their low- and moderate-income clients in building credit as an asset.

CBA provides technical assistance and capacity building to nonprofits to enhance; (1) data flow between nonprofit lenders and the major credit bureaus to provide loan repayment data; (2) training-led initiatives to access credit report data from the bureaus; (3) financial education strategies and tools around asset-based credit building for entrepreneurs; and (4) understanding of the changing credit economy and the impact on the work of nonprofits to offer effective strategies for low- and very low-income individuals and entrepreneurs to build and sustain their credit history. CBA’s work adds significant value to the role of nonprofits in helping underbanked consumers enter the economic mainstream.

CBA’s credit building platform is multi-faceted. Through CBA Reporter and CBA Business Reporter, CBA Access, and CBA’s Credit as an Asset training program, CBA offers MDOs critical strategies, tools and the key mechanisms necessary to help entrepreneurs build credit and enter the financial mainstream. The following summarizes CBA’s three core services:

CBA Reporter and Business Reporter currently enables 219 nonprofit lenders to report approximately 77,000 trade lines every month (totaling $2.7 billion in credit extended to their microenterprise, small business, and consumer loan borrowers) to the major credit bureaus: Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, Experian Business and Dun & Bradstreet. CBA’s members can offer their clients not only a loan to launch a business or meet a household need, but the ability to build positive personal and business credit history.

CBA Access currently enables 326 nonprofits engaged in lending and/or financial education to get credentialed to pull approximately 107,000 credit reports annually at reduced prices from the major credit bureaus—TransUnion, Experian, LexisNexis, Nova Credit and FIS ChexSystems—to underwrite loans, provide financial education, help the unbanked, and track client and program outcomes.

CBA Credit as an Asset training has been offered since 2008 to nonprofit lender practitioners, financial coaches and educators, social service providers and others working directly with consumers and entrepreneurs to promote financial stability and inclusion. The training aims to help participants understand credit building and credit education as a foundational component of any successful asset-building program for underserved clients. Participants receive the knowledge and tools to incorporate into existing programs or to develop new credit building and education programs.

Through CBA’s core services, hundreds of thousands of clients are reached collectively every year through our 563 members. Of these, an estimated 80% are low-income or very-low income and 15% are modest income.