Ever had a problem getting a loan?
You’re not alone.
In 2017, the SBA issued loan guarantees for $25.8 billion to small businesses who could not get a loan from a bank otherwise. That’s 62,000 businesses across the US. And just last year.
People will agree that we have the best financial system in the world when things go well for them. And they would be right. The US has the most advanced financial system in the world, with the largest numbers of people plugged into the financial mainstream.
What happens when things don’t go well for consumers? When the system doesn’t work for them?
We have a lot of terms to describe people who don’t have full access to the financial mainstream: underserved, underbanked, subprime, etc. The first thing you have to realize about this population is that it is not a small one. The FDIC estimates that almost 27 percent of Americans are underbanked or unbanked completely. Only 38 percent of Americans have credit scores in the Exceptional or Very Good range, according to FICO; the other 62 percent is the “rest of us.”
Don’t think that these are “other people’s problems.” The underserved is us and these are our problems.
Many of you have been there. I’ve been there.
Even in our world class financial system, consumers are not being served well. They are not getting access to products designed around their needs; credit at the right time, in the right way, at the right cost; even the most basic financial information needed to make sound decisions.
Yes, technology and innovation offer the potential to solve these problems. But the technology has to be harnessed specifically to these challenges. And the people behind the tech have to understand the diverse and complex nature of underserved markets. These are the reasons Fafnir was launched.
Ever had a problem getting a loan?
At Fafnir, we don’t think that its your fault. And we’re working towards providing the right products, the right credit, and the right information so this never becomes a problem again.