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Challenges our Small Business Borrowers Face (part 1)

Through our unique experiences as both a direct small business lender and process optimization consultant, we’re often asked to provide our perspective on the challenges today’s small business borrowers face when attempting to access capital. Over time, we have observed and documented six common ...

Online Small Business Lender News

As part of its Q1 earnings press release, the board of directors of Lending Club announced last week that it had accepted the resignation of Renaud Laplanche as Chairman and CEO following an internal review of sales of $22 million in near-prime loans to a single investor. This announcement also p...

Recent webinar Q&A: Turning your website into a lead generating tool

On Thursday, April 21st, Spark held a webinar, CDFIs: Turn Your Website Into a Lead Generation Tool. We discussed lead generation and the customer decision journey, including how to drive customers to your website, efficiently collect information to qualify them as a lead for your small business ...

On Demand Video: Optimize Your Process to Maximize Impact

How efficient is your current small business loan operation? Do you have insight into the cost of customer acquisition?  Are you measuring the cost of loan origination?  Is everything done manually or do you have multiple systems, each dealing with a different aspect of the process? Alt...

It’s a New World for Mission-driven Small Business Lenders

Over the past four years, marketplace lending has grown by over 700%. Loan volume at 13 of the largest online lenders grew from a modest $2 billion in 2010 to a staggering $16 billion in 2014. As mission-driven and responsible lenders, we have a role to play in this new world. The good news? The&...

On Demand Video: How to turn your website into a lead generation tool

In 2014, 2.2 million businesses, located in low-income communities, sought credit while CDFIs originated just over 12,300 small business loans. Online small business lenders have stepped in to fill that gap, with multi-million dollar marketing budgets to bring in customers and a streamlined, repe...

On Demand Video: Online lenders – How do CDFIs compete?

They market themselves as quick and easy. Small business borrowers can apply and be approved for a loan over the internet in no time. Online lenders aren’t regulated, their numbers are growing and they are spending a large portion of their revenue to acquire new customers. How can Community Devel...