Keeping Up With Kabbage
October 17, 2020
On Friday, American Express announced that it had completed its acquisition of Kabbage.
“Kabbage, An American Express Company will continue to provide quick and easy cash flow management solutions for small businesses, now backed by the trust, service, and security of a American Express,” American Express wrote on social media. “We’re excited to welcome Kabbage’s talented colleagues to American Express. Together we will combine our over 60 years of experience backing small businesses with Kabbage’s innovative technology to support our customers through this challenging time, and help them get back on their feet and thrive.”
Meanwhile, below is a copy of a Q&A AltFinanceDaily had with Kabbage co-founder Kathryn Petralia that appeared in our magazine’s July/August issue.
Q: How specifically do you think the pandemic will change the way SMEs bank?
A: The pandemic will first change with whom they bank, and that choice will change the way they bank. For perspective, one hundred percent of Kabbage customers have a bank account, but very few of them can get a loan from their bank. We launched Kabbage Checking earlier this year to serve the smallest of businesses without sacrificing the features they expect and offering other products banks don’t. We’re focused on making cash flow tools accessible to the businesses traditionally underserved and overlooked, and the pandemic has been a catalyst for businesses to find new solutions.
Q: How might the dynamic of banking change after the crisis?
A: It was well-reported that businesses without an existing credit relationship with their bank were turned away from applying for PPP loans. We’ve heard directly from many of our PPP customers that this will compel them to change banks, and the demand for Kabbage Checking has reflected that sentiment since its launch. In the short term, businesses of all sizes and ages will seek out and sign up for new, tech-forward banking partners. In the long term, that shift will change customers’ expectations of what banks should offer. For example, prior to the PPP, Kabbage had issued well over a billion dollars to customers during non-banking hours. On-demand, 24/7 access to funding and cash flow insights, or faster settlements and money transfers will soon become commonplace, and large retail banks will need to adapt if they want to capture or reclaim these customers.
Q: How are these changes likely to impact alternative lenders and funders?
A: For starters, single-product lending companies will realize they must diversify their offerings in order to compete in the new financial-services marketplace. I would expect to see lenders launch new products to more resemble a bank. Conversely, traditional banks will need to begin adopting automated ways to serve customers with a tech-forward experience. Especially in the new normal where customers may be apprehensive about in-person banking meetings, they must adapt online to acquire and serve customers.
Q: What’s still needed to help Main Street recover?
A: The PPP was only the first phase; we’re not out of the woods yet. Businesses now need to restart and eventually grow. The crisis made business owners realize they need tighter controls over their cash flow, as many found themselves on the back foot and ill-equipped to withstand a long-term crisis such as the one through which we are all muddling.
They’ll need cash-flow tools to be more prudent and appropriately plan for similar events. Having said that, it’s not only on the shoulders of small businesses or tech solutions. They need customer demand, and local economies need to begin to reopen safely so consumers feel comfortable returning to normal commerce. That will take the support of cities and states encouraging consumers to shop local so small businesses have greater incentive to recall their employees and get back to work.
Q: How can alternative lenders and funders best play a role in this recovery?
A: Much of what we’re already doing is exactly what our economy needs. For the most part, fintech companies serve the customers banks won’t or can’t. That reality is unfortunately unchanged today. That’s why during the pandemic Kabbage made every effort possible to provide products that helped SMBs through this crisis. With respect to PPP, we helped nearly 300,000 small businesses access over $7 billion, helping preserve an estimated 945,000 jobs. Our payments product saw a near 4X spike in adoption as businesses sought contactless payment options. We built www.helpsmallbsuiness.com in three days to allow any small business to generate needed revenue by selling online gift certificates. We also launched Kabbage Checking, giving small businesses a new banking option, and Kabbage Insights remains available and free to access for any small business.
Q: What changes do you expect to see in the alternative lending and funding industry as a result of the pandemic?
A: Everyone will expand their services. Whether it’s larger companies expanding their solutions through acquisitions, or start-ups investing beyond their primary product, everyone will aim to enhance their offerings to give customers more data-driven products that help them rebuild.
Q: Kabbage just agreed to be purchased by American Express. Should we expect to see more consolidation in the alternative lending/funding space? If so, over what time frame and why do you expect this to happen?
A: I would not be surprised if we saw more deals announced before the end of the year.
Q: Tell us a little about why Kabbage decided to sell and why the timing was right?
A: For us, it has always been about finding the right company with the right mission and intentions. We just happened to be in the middle of a crisis when the conversations started, despite having the financial capacity to support operations for multiple years. American Express shares our vision to be an essential partner to small businesses, and we couldn’t be more excited at the opportunity to continue the important work of providing solutions and innovative capabilities that address a range of small business cash flow needs alongside AmEx.
The Roosevelt Hotel is Closing Permanently Due to Pandemic Losses
October 13, 2020
After nearly a century of quintessential Manhatten hospitality, the Roosevelt Hotel is closing by the end of the month, sources say. A relic of classic New York that survived the Great Depression, WWII, and Broker Fair 2019, the hotel is officially shutting down for good after suffering pandemic related losses, a spokesperson said.
“Due to the current, unprecedented environment and the continued uncertain impact from COVID-19, the owners of The Roosevelt Hotel have made the difficult decision to close the hotel, and the associates were notified this week,” the Spokesperson told CNN reporters Friday. “The iconic hotel, along with most of New York City, has experienced very low demand, and as a result, the hotel will cease operations before the end of the year. There are currently no plans for the building beyond the scheduled closing.”
The hotel will be added to the growing list of staple New York City businesses that have closed as a result of COVID. The Roosevelt was named and built to honor the United States’ 26th president and it opened its doors on September 22, 1924. Constructed during Prohibition, the building began the modern trend of featuring designer store windows on the street front.
Appearing as a backdrop for dozens of Hollywood blockbusters like Boiler Room, Malcolm X, and The Irishman, the hotel was iconic. The New Year’s Eve tradition of singing “Auld Lang Syne” was born at the Roosevelt in 1929 when Guy Lombardo and his orchestra broadcast the song live over the radio.
The building was purchased by the limited investment branch of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in 1999.
In July, government officials and PIA executives debated the hotel’s future, some hoping rumors that President Trump would purchase the property were true. The initial plan was to sell or renovate the city block to create office space, thought to be far more lucrative than the hotel business in 2019. Work-from-home orders threw a wrench into the cogs, and the hotel kept losing money: no one wanted the traditional New York experience during a pandemic.
Posting a loss during this year has become expected of the hospitality industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hospitality lost 7.5 million jobs due to shutdowns and travel restrictions in April. CNN reported that only half as many jobs had been added back. In September, NYC hotels were below 40% occupancy.
The decision to ultimately close The Roosevelt might also come from trouble in PIA’s airline business. After the crash of PIA flight 8303 that killed 97 people in Havelian, Pakistan, European and US regulators banned flights from PIA for six months. After the crash, nearly one-third of airplane licenses in Pakistan were found to be fraudulent or forged, further straining the organization’s ability to recover.
Though this may have contributed to The Roosevelt’s closure, the pandemic sealed the deal. According to a study by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, New York has 2,336 hotels statewide that have lost 43,014 jobs this year.
Without further congressional aid, 1,565 hotels might close: the AHLA found that 74% of overall US hotels say more layoffs are coming if the industry doesn’t get additional federal assistance. But successful talks for more aid in the House and Senate are increasingly unlikely due to this election year’s heightened partisanship.
NYC is losing yet another historical business, as the way of life and all things we have come to expect from the big apple struggle to survive. As a destination venue, The Roosevelt was also dear to AltFinanceDaily. It was the home of Broker Fair 2019, where Sean Murray spoke in the same ballroom that Michel Douglas (as Gorden Gekko) made the famous “Greed is Good” speech as part of the 1987 film Wall Street. Murray made a similar speech but rewrote it to fit the industry that had gathered. “Funding small business, for lack of a better phrase, is good,” he said on stage to an audience of 700 people.
Unfortunately, it was The Roosevelt that ultimately needed funding and didn’t get it.
Square, Stripe, Intuit, Shopify, Talked SMB Lending at LendIt Fintech 2020
October 8, 2020
The LendIt Fintech digital conference last week was a sign of the times. This year, millions of average businesses and consumers have had to go virtual: they had no choice. 2020 has been a year of struggle and survival, and a time of great fintech adoption.
Some firms have been more successful than others. Going full digital, LendIt introduced virtual networking at the conference- the first day alone saw 2,171 meetings. Zoom meetings and virtual greetings took the place of handshakes and elevator pitches that would regularly accompany the convention.
On day three, LendIt hosted a panel of SMB lending leaders from Stripe, Shopify, Square, and Quickbooks Capital. Bryan Lee, Senior Director of Financial Services for Salesforce, served as moderator and he focused the discussion on “How the leading fintech brands are adapting.”
THE PIVOT
Lee began the talk by asking Eddie Serrill, Business Lead from Stripe Capital, about how the industry has pivoted.
Serrill talked about how Stripe was powering online interactions and saw an influx of traditionally offline businesses switching over to their platforms. Stripe also saw an increased demand for online purchases and payment.
“We’ve been trying to find that right balance between supporting users that have been doing incredibly well,” Serrill said. “While trying to support our users who are seeing a bit of a setback.”
Stripe introduced a lending product in September of last year and now SMBs can borrow from Stripe and pay back by diverting a percentage of their sales, much like the other panelists’ companies offer.
Jessica Jiang, Head of Capital Markets at Square Capital, talked about how her firm adjusted. Square reacted to fill the niche of their underserved customers by introducing a main street lending fund, serving industries hard hit by the pandemic, Jiang said. Small buinesess that relied on in-person action like coffee shops and retail community businesses were given preferential lending options.
Product Lead at Shopify, Richard Shaw, said that this year his firm learned to be prepared for anything. Everything that Shopify was potentially going to do or planning on implementing in the coming years suddenly became a here-and-now necessity.
“We tore up our existing plans,” Shaw said. “It was like the commerce world of 2030 turned up in 2020. You need to do ten years of work, but you need to do it today.”
Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce giant has doubled in value this year. The firm launched Shopify Capital in the US and Canada in 2016 and has originated $1.2 billion in funding to small businesses since that time.
Luke Voiles, the VP of Intuits QuickBooks Capital, talked about how his team handled pandemic conservatively.
“Five years of digital shift has happened instantaneously due to COVID,” Voiles said. “Intuit is pretty recession-resistant in the sense that you have to do taxes, you have to do your accounting, and the shift to digital helps a lot.”
Business lending was different, Voiles said, as soon as his team saw COVID coming, they battened down the hatches, slowed lending, and pivoted to facilitating PPP.
PPP
Voiles said the craziest thing he has seen in his career was what Quickbooks did to deploy PPP aid.
Within about two weeks, almost 500 people from across Intuit came together to shift all the data they carried on customers to aid applications.
“We were uniquely positioned to help solve and deploy that capital,” Voiles said. “We have a payroll business where 1.4 billion business use us, we have a tax business where we have Schedule C tax filings, and we have a lending business. We were able to pivot and put the pieces together quickly.”
QuickBooks Capital deployed $1.2 billion to 31,000 business in a process that Voiles said was 90% automated. Now customers are awaiting other rounds of government aid.
Square’s Jiang said the initial shutdown weeks in March and April saw hundreds of Square team members working on PPP facilitation through the night and weekends. As the funds dried up those first two weeks, it was clear to Jiang the program was favoring larger firms and higher loan amounts, leaving out small businesses.
“That’s typical of investment bankers, but not very typical of tech,” Jiang said. “PPP is a perfect example of how small businesses are continuing to be underserved by banks.”
THE SHAKEOUT AND THE FUTURE
2020 has been a major shock to the lending marketplace. Voiles from Quickbooks said the amount of work it took to make it through the first wave was a significant shakeout.
“You’ve seen what’s happening with Kabbage and OnDeck and other transactions with people getting sold; there is a shakeout happening in the space,” Voiles said. “The bigger players will make it through and will continue to help small businesses get access to capital that they need.”
When asked about the future roadmap of QuickBooks Capital, Voiles said it wasn’t just about automating banking. Using Intuit’s resources to build an automated system is only half of the picture- the firm believes in an expert-driven platform. After the automated process, customers will be able to talk to an expert to review the data, and “check their work.” Voiles said Quickbooks wants to offer a service that is equivalent to the replacement of a CFO.
“These small businesses that have less than ten employees, they can’t afford to hire a pro,” Voiles said. “They need automated support to show them the dashboard and picture of what their business is.”
Pointing to Stripe’s online infrastructure, Serrill exemplified what successful lenders will offer next year: a platform that combines many needs of SMBs in one place.
“I think it’s really about linking all of this data, making it super intuitive and anticipating the need for their users, so they don’t need a team of business school grads to manage their finances,” Serrill said. “So they can get back to building the core of their business, not figuring out whether they have enough cash flow tomorrow.”
Jiang said the future of small business would be written in data, contactless payments, and digital banking. She sees consolidation in the Fintech space and has a positive outlook on bank-fintech partnerships.
The FDIC granted Square a conditional approval for the issuance of an Industrial Loan Company ILC in March this year. Jiang outlined plans on launching an online SMB lending and banking service next year called Square Financial Services if the conditional charter remains in place.
For Shopify’s future, Shaw was excited to look forward to the launching of Shopify balance- a cash flow management system, and Shopify installment payments. He reiterated that the success of Shopify’s lending division was due in part because making loans was not the entire business.
“Shopify Capital is one piece of a wider ecosystem,” Shaw said. “All these things together are more powerful than individual parts.”
Jackie Reses is Leaving Square Capital
October 2, 2020
Square Capital’s lead executive, Jacqueline Reses, is leaving the company. Square announced on October 2, that her resignation would be effective as of October 31. Reses is largely responsible for developing Square’s robust lending business, one that effectively made the company one of the largest non-bank small business lenders in the country.
It’s time to hang up my boots and say goodbye to my good friends at @Square. To the people I’ve worked with: everything I love about Square is related to you. It is my privilege and honor to have been along for the ride with you.
— Jackie Reses (@jackiereses) October 2, 2020
I shared my thoughts with Squares today because the place is so special! I thought I would share. pic.twitter.com/tXAE0dZhK9
— Jackie Reses (@jackiereses) October 2, 2020
Capify Announces $10 Million Equity Round As Well As Continued Support From Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division
September 30, 2020
Access To Business Loans Especially During COVID-19 Pandemic
(Manchester, England and Sydney, Australia) – Capify (http://www.capify.co.uk, http://www.capify.com.au ), a leading fintech small business lending platform, today announced it has closed a $10 million equity round as well as continued support from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division through its existing credit facilities.
“The fact that we were able to raise $10 million for an online small business lender in the midst of a global pandemic from sophisticated investors with industry experience speaks to Capify’s business model, the unprecedented opportunity ahead of us and its management team,” said David Goldin, Founder and CEO of Capify.
Continued, Mr. Goldin, “We believe demand by small businesses seeking access to unsecured capital will be at unprecedented levels because most businesses have already accessed the government backed business loan programs in the UK and Australia market but will still need additional capital – as do the many businesses that didn’t qualify for the Government guaranteed programs and are seeking much needed working capital to grow.”
In addition, Capify is actively seeking partnerships with companies with large small business customer bases to provide much needed financing to their small business customers, thus allowing them access to capital to purchase goods / services which have proven financially difficult during this challenging time. Furthermore, we are looking for opportunities where we can assist our industry peers who don’t have access to capital during this time by providing capital to their customer base.
Capify’s 12 year presence in the UK and Australia market is more relevant than ever as small businesses demand for access to capital to navigate through COVID-19 is at an all time high. According to John Rozenbroek, COO / CFO of Capify, “It is crucial at this time that small businesses are aware of alternative funding solutions to support cash flow or invest in their future. Capify is one of the few online small business lending platforms in the marketplace that can actively provide non-government backed business loans at scale to small businesses seeking working capital to grow their business. ”
About Capify
Capify is an online lender that provides flexible financing solutions to small businesses in the UK and Australia seeking working capital to sustain or grow their business. The fintech company has been operating in the UK and Australia market for over 12 years.
For more details about Capify, visit
Capify UK: http://www.capify.co.uk
Capify Australia: http://www.capify.com.au
Capify UK Media Contact:
Ian Wood, Marketing Director
iwood@capify.co.uk
+44 0161 393 9536
Capify Australia Media Contact:
Nandita Graham, Senior Marketing Manager
ngraham@capify.com.au
+61 433 511 653
Capify CEO David Goldin on New $10 Million Equity Round
September 30, 2020
Capify, a leading international small business lending platform, announced a $10 million equity round this week from a new investment group with vast experience in the alternative lending industry.
“[investors were] diligent seeing Capify, the management team, and the opportunity,” Goldin said. “They thought it was a very good investment, particularly how Capify’s portfolio performed during the pandemic.”
Goldin said the capital is a great “restart of the engine” after the cautious approach the company took to lending at the height of the pandemic. The money is not an equity round from current investors, but rather new capital joining the team.
The funding will be directed toward ramping lending back up and extending business partnerships with firms that serve small businesses, as well as direct and indirect lenders.
“So, hindsight is actually better than 2020 vision; no one in our lifetime has experienced the pandemic,” Goldin said. “No one knew what to expect from a risk profile, so we took the conservative approach.”
That approach was to shut down new loans and focus on servicing its current customers. It was a difficult time for the alternative lending industry veteran, but now Goldin said he sees a great demand for capital.
“This was one of the toughest challenges that I’ve experienced ever as an entrepreneur,” Goldin said. “The result really speaks to Capify as a company. People are willing to make that investment, believing in opportunity ahead and not the current times or the past during the pandemic.”
Goldin said that Capify has always been known for its well-performing portfolio, one of the reasons that in 2019 the firm received a $95 million credit facility from Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division.
Goldin began working in the fintech industry before the word fintech was even coined; in the early 2000s, he started one of the first MCA companies. Amerimerchant started selling loans and MCAs internationally in the UK and Australia in 2008, then rebranded to Capify in 2015. After leaving the US market in 2017 gained Goldman’s attention last year.
“So now that we have the firepower, we believe there’ll be opportunities in these markets as demand picks up for small business lending,” Goldin said.
Prashant Fuloria Explains Why Fundbox Has Been Successful in 2020
September 28, 2020
When Prashant Fuloria joined Fundbox as Chief Operations Officer in 2016, the San Franciscan firm was a three-year-old startup with less than eighty employees. By the time Fuloria moved into the office of CEO this July, the small business credit and invoice financing company had grown exponentially, with more than $430 million in raised capital to date and triple the number of employees.
At the height of the pandemic, many firms halted funding or shuttered their doors for good. Meanwhile Fundbox kept lending, and outperformed the market, Fuloria said.
“It’s become very clear to us that we have greatly outperformed the market,” Fuloria said. “In terms of delivering value to customers, and also in terms of our business performance.”
In the toughest weeks of the pandemic, he said that Fundbox’s loan delinquency rose to 8-9%, up from a “low single-digit number” pre-pandemic. In comparison, the industry standard according to Fuloria, was a delinquency rate of 30-40%, including from larger firms and more traditional lenders like big banks.
“I think we’ve performed extremely well during COVID; the numbers just validate the investment we’ve made, especially in data,” Fuloria said. “That puts us in a very good position because a number of folks have exited the market and the need, the demand has not gone away.”
The number one thing you can do to perform well in a recession is to have a strong business going into it, Fuloria explained. Fundbox attributes part of its strength to its data. Nearly a fourth of Fundbox’s capital goes toward data assets, Fuloria said.
“If you add it all up, we’ve invested a little over $100 million in our data asset,” Fuloria said. “It’s a big investment for anybody- particularly a big investment for a mid-sized company.”
Fuloria said this money goes toward collecting customer information, which is processed by in-house tech and a talented team of engineers who can turn data into valuable information for serving SMBs.
“Small businesses,” Fuloria said, “they have the complexity of enterprises but the scale of consumers.”
Coming from twenty years of tech and product managerial experience at firms like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, Fuloria knows a thing or two about scale. He said he found his roots at Google, working when it was just a small team- by the time he left six and a half years later, Google had 35,000 employees.
When it came to joining Fundbox in 2016, Fuloria said he was attracted by the company’s mission, the talented team there, and how in just three years, the small firm had demonstrated how it could help SMBs.
“Fundbox as a company said ‘We are a financial services platform that is powering the small business economy with new credit and payment solutions,'” Fuloria said. “And that mission was very strong: it made sense to me, and it resonated with me.”
University of Delaware, Other Universities Going Long on Fintech
September 15, 2020The University of Delaware recently received a $9 million tax incentive to construct a new Fintech Center on its premier Science, Technology, and Advanced Research (STAR) campus, with help from a community-building company Cinnaire. Slated for completion in 2021, the building marks yet another fintech-focused resource for higher education.
Financial technology programs have long been offered at prominent business schools such as Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, international schools such as Oxford, and research institutions like MIT since the late 2000s.
Now that fintech has become a long term value creator in the financial world, other institutions such as the University of Michigan, Fordham, and Delaware are excited to implement fintech opportunities on campus for undergraduate and graduate students alike.
Discover Bank and Cinnaire jointly funded the building, a $39 million project. According to Delaware plans, it will create a space on the Delaware STAR campus to host a new Financial Services Incubator to encourage research and collaboration between students and industry leaders.
“The FinTech building will bring together computer science, engineering and business experts in cybersecurity, human-machine learning, data analysis, and other emerging financial technologies,” said Levi Thompson, Dean of the College of Engineering. “These collaborations will allow us to provide our students with a very unique experience that prepares them to excel in the workforce. Furthermore, our Fintech discoveries will benefit people throughout Delaware and the world.”
Cinnaire is a national nonprofit that focuses on improving communities’ financial health by creating capital solutions to revitalization projects: lending funds, managing, and building housing structures.
Funding communities is what Cinnaire does best: in this case, utilizing a New Markets Tax Credit to fund an addition to the Delaware campus.
The nearby University of Fordham at Lincoln Center has also been trending toward preparing students for a fintech world. Undergrad and graduate students pursuing an MBA through the Gabelli School have the option of a fintech concentration.
The course work not only incorporates data science and machine learning skills into the worlds of credit lending and risk management but facilitates relationships between students and a wealth of industry partners.
Sudip Gupta, professor, and Director of the MS Quantitative Finance program, spoke about the courses’ popularity there. The program is ranked in the top 20 of its kind in the world by Risk Magazine.
He has seen a revolution in fintech in the past few years that has recently received a big push by pandemic forces, introducing the wholesale adoption of fintech techniques into traditional financial institutions.
“The fintech revolution in the industry- big data, machine learning techniques, storage capacity, and cloud computing has been going on for the last couple of years,” Gupta said. “The pandemic provided the big push to move toward that direction.”
Gupta has been following the development of alternative credit closely, recently publishing an award-winning paper studying machine learning to create alternative consumer credit scores using mobile phone and social media data.
“The idea of my research- let’s look at people who do not have a credit history or enough traditional credit you could get from a FICO score,” Gupta said. “Using this data, it turns out they are better predictors, and better to judge than FICO, and can reach out to more people.”
Gupta is excited for the adoption of big data techniques into alternative and traditional consumer loans because it offers a win-win for consumers and institutions alike, he said. Echoing the findings of many successful alternative finance companies, Gupta said his research showed that collected data could offer better insight for lending than “stale FICO scores.”
Up north at the Univerisity of Michigan, Professor Robert Dittmar at the Ross School of Business heads the Fintech Initiative. He is working on adding even more fintech classes. Recently, through a partnership with PEAK, a Chicago fintech lending company, Michigan launched a fintech initiative that incorporates undergrad and grad classes, faculty research, and a fintech entrepreneurial club that connects students to industry leaders.
Michigan Ross is adding fintech classes for a variety of reasons.
“The simplest reason: students are interested in learning more about this kind of space,” Dittmar said. “And we’re seeing more demand from the industry side for students that know more.”
For years Dittmar said tech companies and startups in silicon valley were pioneering innovations in the industry. Through talking with alumni and contacts in the industry, Michigan found that fintech has gotten to the place where there is an excellent supply of data engineers. Still, there is a demand for professionals with the financial business expertise to implement these technologies.
“What we are trying to do at Ross is fill in that gap,” Dittmar said. “what we’d like is for [students] to know enough about the technology that they can provide the insights of finance and business to the people that are doing that technical work.”
At Ross, they are organizing what will one day be like a fellowship program. The program will feature a combined learning experience: students will learn data analytic finance, apply their computing skills in credit decision making classes, and then connect with the industry in experiential learning classes.
“In the last couple of years, I have been taking students to London to work at fintech startups in the UK,” Dittmar said. “And we are hoping to expand that program so that most or all graduate students have the opportunity to participate in something like that.”
Last year Ross hosted a “Fintech Challenge” competition to design a banking service to reach customers in a “banking desert” in rural Michigan. The program is hoping to host another challenge this year, despite complications of COVID-19.
