To efficiently empower credit unions and community banks with early-stage fintech tools to create a more inclusive and resilient financial future.
Our above mission is divided into three broad goals:
We give credit unions and community banks early access to emerging innovative technologies when their feedback can truly shape product direction. We help them:
Prepare to work with early-stage fintech startups.
Identify the right startups for collaboration.
Launch pilot projects with limited commitment and risk.
Assess pilot outcomes to determine viability and impact.
Integrate successful solutions into operations and measure long-term results.
Make strategic investments in early-stage startups.
We support fintech startups early in the development of their first product, when assistance has the most impact. We help them:
Connect with the right credit unions and community banks for their solution.
Launch a measurable pilot project at those credit unions and community banks with their product.
Evaluate the measurable results of their pilot project and iterate quickly.
Integrate successfully piloted products into credit union and community bank operations.
Identify and engage early-stage investors aligned with their offerings.
Diverse teams build better products. We support three segments of underrepresented, lower-/middle-income, or historically marginalized communities (women, Black, Latino, Indigenous, veteran, LGBTQ+, etc):
Founders: Connect them with the right resources.
Interns: Open pathways to high-tech careers.
Financial Consumers: Encourage the creation of inclusive financial products that meet their needs.
Our three goals are incorporated into six actionable initiatives:
Develop regionally rooted ecosystems that bring together local:
Credit unions and community banks
Early-stage startups
Investors
Accelerators / incubators, preferrable rooted in a local university
Each ecosystem will enable multiple opportunities through accessible, high impact local events and programs that increase access and participation, while also connecting with ecosystems in other regions for broader collaboration and idea-sharing.
Based on feedback from 25+ credit unions, we're launching local and virtual educational events around five topics:
Startup Integration: How can credit unions, and community banks, work effectively with early-stage startups?
Startup Investing: How can credit unions, and community banks, invest in early-stage startups?
Data Governance, Strategy and Analytics: How can credit unions, and community banks, organize, clean, and prepare their data for working with startups? This is especially important for working with AI-based startups.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: How can credit unions, and community banks, best serve their most underserved members or customers? This includes reducing bias against them, a common problem for AI-based startups.
Small Financial Institutions: How do issues and solutions proposed in the above topics change when applied to our most vulnerable financial institutions, those with less than $500M in assets?
We accelerate the process of identifying the all-important product-market fit by doing the following for as many startups as possible:
Introduce them to the right credit unions and community banks for their specific product, stage, location, and other attributes.
Facilitate feedback from those credit unions and community banks for improving their product
Set them up with a pilot project with some credit unions and community banks to implement their product on a limited, measurable basis.
Introduce them to the right investors for their specific business model, stage, location, or other attributes.
Accessible capital is a significant barrier to entry for most early-stage founders. We address this by doing the following:
Research and engage investors who focus on fintech and/or underrepresented founders.
Connect these investors with early-stage fintech startups across the US.
Share our investor network with partner accelerators and incubators to increase visibility and opportunities.
Women, Black, Latino, Indigenous, veteran, LGBTQ+, and other historically marginalized founders typically have the most difficulties getting resources to succeed. We do the following to help them, particularly in combination with initiative #3 above:
Partnering with mission-aligned organizations across the US.
Tailor support to the unique challenges these founders face.
Elevate their voices in building the next generation of financial technology.
We provide internships for students from underserved communities–within NAFC and among our member startups–by leveraging partnerships with universities in our regional ecosystems. These internships open doors to high-growth careers in technology and financial services.
We'll achieve our initiatives above through six programs developed in part from feedback from 25+ CUs, each featuring dedicated events and other offerings with content guided by a committee of financial institution and ecosystem executives.
This program focuses on building productive relationships across credit unions, community banks, fintechs, investors, and community partners.
This program encompasses the content of all of the other programs above as they are adjusted for the unique challenges and opportunities of the most vulnerable group of financial institutions, those under $500M in assets.
This program addresses how to navigate through the practical realities of implementing early-stage fintech solutions within a credit union environment.
This program addresses how to responsibly evaluate, structure, and manage investments or strategic partnerships with early-stage fintech companies.
This program addresses how to establish clear data ownership, governance frameworks, and analytics strategies that support better decision-making.
This program addresses how to design fintech products to either better serve underserved members or reduce bias against them (particularly important for AI).