Community Lenders

Access to financial services nationwide as well as employment and housing is increasingly determined by an individual’s credit history and credit score, as defined by the major credit bureaus. By far the best and quickest way to improve a poor or non-existent credit history — and help low-income, unbanked and underserved families get access to safe, affordable, mainstream lending products — is to show a positive recent payment history on open accounts. However, most community lenders in the U.S. are not or cannot report their clients’ credit behavior to the major credit bureaus.

Credit Builders Alliance was incorporated in 2006 as a non-profit organization to help community lenders – including CDFIs, microenterprise and housing development organizations, asset building organizations and community credit unions – report loan repayment data to the major credit bureaus.

In May 2006, CBA launched the CBA Reporter service which lets community lenders report their data to Experian.

CBA continues to work towards developing solutions such as bulk rate services and other packages to help community lenders strengthen services with respect to credit building and the credit industry.

If you are a community lender, we invite you to complete the Join Us! form and tell us about your credit needs. We can then provide you a free CBA Reporter needs assessment to get you on your way.

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Building Credit

"The single most important means for our CDFI to graduate micro-entrepreneurs and homebuyers into the formal banking system would be to develop meaningful client credit histories. This service provided by Credit Builders Alliance will truly allow us to achieve our larger objective of long-term impact on the financial well-being of our clients."

- Robert Vickers, Latino Economic Development Corp.