Strengthen the flow of loans to migrant small business owners

Gabriela Campoverde hopes to help immigrant small business owners deploy more capital by improving the efficiency of the process. And even if the first attempt doesn’t work, she believes, keep trying.

When her first attempt at becoming a lender didn’t work, she switched gears. Specifically, she created a platform aimed at helping banks invest in low- to middle-income communities, monitor those investments, and ultimately increase the flow of money to small businesses. Founded Miren, a company with

Campoverde has a financial services background, having worked in marketing, project management and cybersecurity at American Express and Goldman Sachs. However, she has long had an interest in fintech. She further said she was frustrated by the lack of products for working-class immigrant communities.

And in 2020, while attending the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Campoverde saw gaps in access to financing for minority small business owners, especially Latinos. And quarantined at her home in Queens with her family, she witnessed how difficult her pandemic experience has been for many in her community.

With that in mind, while in school, she went door-to-door, speaking to Latino immigrant small business owners about their financial situation and how they obtained capital for their startups. Through these interviews, she gained a better understanding of how small businesses are accessing affordable capital and the scarcity of available resources.

ideas and pivots

It sparked the idea of ​​a company lending to small Latino-owned businesses, using criteria different from the usual information needed to assess a company’s creditworthiness. It also educates borrowers on topics such as how to prepare and apply for a loan. But “when I tried to raise affordable funding for the idea, I failed,” she says. The main reason was that capital providers felt it was a risky business and insisted on pricing accordingly.

So Campoverde turned around and started talking late last year with microlenders and other lenders who typically lend to smaller, riskier businesses and use funds provided by larger financial institutions. . Under the Community Reinvestment Act, banks are required to invest in low- to middle-income communities. Of course, there is no profit in offering these loans. Because it takes a very long time to accept. Banks are therefore typically microlenders operating within these communities.

However, many lenders use inefficient systems, manually entering data, using multiple Excel sheets, using numerous separate systems, and transferring data from one program to another. She found that she was cutting and pasting data into “Things can easily go unnoticed,” she says Campoverde.

Perhaps a better approach, she realized, was to develop software that would improve the efficiency of these institutions, ultimately allowing them to serve more customers and put more capital into it. . Campoverde created software for loan origination and servicing for microlenders to help assess applications and track loans. This could also free up time so lenders can spend more time providing technical assistance to small business owners. , was published last fall.

Campoverde and technical lead Luke Fraker are currently developing another product to help financial institutions monitor and aggregate data in their CRA investments. Microlenders and others who receive money from banks are required to report on areas such as the number of jobs created and changes in company earnings. But they usually use the same disparate systems they use internally to send all their information to banks. This means that aggregating all the data you need can be a time consuming task. This new product streamlines processes and provides a more efficient and faster way to aggregate information.

Campoverde raised about $250,000 in competitions, much of it from her recently completed AWS Impact Accelerator. She plans to raise money in a seed round next year.