Mambu and Grameen America recently announced the they have extended their partnership for an additional five years. Mambu is a SaaS banking and financial services platform. Grameen America is the leading microfinance nonprofit organization focused on low-income minority women in the United States. This partnership chiefly aims to meet Grameen America’s aggressive growth plan to help women entrepreneurs. The plan includes scaling its operations to invest $12 billion in loans to more than 500,000 minority small business owners across 49 branch locations. Currently, Grameen America has invested over $1.8 billion in more than 135,000 low-income women entrepreneurs since opening in January 2008.
Key statistics:
- Loan transaction time reduced by 50 percent
- Caseload benchmark grew by 25 percent
- Grameen America moved to 100 percent digital disbursements and repayments
- Organization became more that 100 percent financially sustainable
Innovation and growth
In 2013, Grameen America and Mambu partnered to replace the lender’s custom-built legacy system with a modern, cloud-native platform. The new platform would enable the organization to rapidly scale and streamline operations. Additionally, users will be able to easily access it from a mobile device, providing an enhanced user experience. Grameen America strategically rolled out Mambu’s platform region by region, completing the national launch over the course of nine months.
Following the move to the cloud, the company reported significant loan processing improvements, improved data accuracy and data analytics. It also reported enhanced internal and external auditing capabilities, including the ability to conduct surprise audits and/or quickly detect fraud based on data irregularities. The organization’s loan transaction time was reduced by 50 percent and the caseload benchmark grew by 25 percent. Grameen America has moved to 100 percent digital disbursements and repayments. As a result, the organization has become more than 60 percent financially sustainable.
“We are pleased to extend our partnership with Mambu, given the important role they continue to play in enabling our capacity to scale,” said Andrea Jung, President and CEO of Grameen America. “Mambu shares our commitment to constant innovation, leveraging technology to empower individuals, while streamlining and improving operating efficiency and effectiveness. Mambu’s platform has enabled Grameen America to transform our member experience and provide powerful digital solutions to further accelerate our organization’s growth and impact for women entrepreneurs nationwide.”
Increasing access to financial services
Mambu is changing the market through its composable approach, which is the quick and flexible assembly of independent best-of-breed vendors. Through open APIs, Mambu seamlessly integrates with other off-the-shelf software solutions. As a result, it ensures Grameen America’s borrowers an even greater user experience. Additionally, it ensures the presence of sophisticated digital tools and services. For example, Grameen America implemented compliance-related software and disbursement cards for loans quickly and easily. Mambu’s solution is more agile and cost-effective than its previous legacy platform. Through this platform, Mambu enabled Grameen America to build a modern lending system offering in the cloud by composing the best product for its specific needs.
“We’re super excited to be a part of Grameen America’s impact!” said Johanna Pugh, Managing Director North America, Mambu. “Now more than ever, Grameen America is making a difference in so many communities by playing a key role in their economic recoveries. Aligned with our own mission to make financial services accessible to all, we are proud to play a role in helping the organization achieve its goals and reach even more women entrepreneurs. As we continue to see demand for more agile and digital solutions for every facet of the population in the U.S. and globally, our partnership reinforces our ambition to bring innovative technology into the digital first-world to help create better financial services and experiences for millions of individuals.”
Empowering low-income women for 13 years
Grameen America launched in New York in 2008. Its goal is to provide small loans, credit and asset building and financial education programs to women entrepreneurs. It specifically strives to help women entrepreneurs who live below the poverty line. The strength of Grameen America’s model is its focus on community lending. The peer support and monitoring system serves as a strong motivator for each borrower to repay their loan. Since its launch, Grameen America has disbursed more than $1.8 billion in loans to more than 134,500 borrowers.
About Mambu
SaaS. Cloud native. API-driven. These all describe market-leading banking and financial services platform Mambu. Launched in 2011, Mambu can fast-track the design and build of nearly any type of financial offering for banks of all sizes, lenders, fintechs, retailers, telcos and more. Our unique composable approach means that independent components, systems and connectors can be assembled in any configuration to meet business needs and end user demands. Mambu has 500 employees that support 180 customers in over 65 countries – including N26, OakNorth, Tandem, ABN AMRO, Bank Islam and Orange. www.mambu.com
About Grameen America
Founded by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, Grameen America is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit microfinance organization dedicated to helping women who live in poverty build small businesses to create better lives for their families. The organization offers microloans, financial training and support to transform communities and fight poverty in the United States. Since opening in January 2008, Grameen America has invested over $1.8 billion in more than 134,500 low-income women entrepreneurs. Opening originally in Jackson Heights, Queens, Grameen America has expanded to 24 branches in 17 U.S. cities in Austin, TX, Boston, MA, Camden, NJ, Charlotte, NC, Chicago, IL, Fresno, CA, Houston, TX, Indianapolis, IN, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL, Newark, NJ, New York City, NY, Omaha, NE, Oakland, CA, San Jose, CA, Trenton, NJ and Union City, NJ.
Learn more at www.grameenamerica.org.
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