luz urrutia |Accion机会基金

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
Welcome to Emerge Everywhere. I’m Jennifer Tescher, journalist turned financial health champion. As founder and CEO of the Financial Health Network, I’ve spent my career connecting forward thinking leaders to the growing Fin Health movement. Now, I’m sharing these conversations with you. Discover how these visionaries are challenging the status quo and improving financial health for their customers, employees and communities.

I go way back with my guest today, Luz Urrutia. She is a close friend and co-conspirator on the quest to create an inclusive financial system. Luz’s passion is rooted in her own experience of moving to the US from Venezuela as a credit-invisible and she has spent her career supporting underserved communities through advocating for their voice in the financial system. Right now, in the midst of the pandemic, Luz’s focus as the CEO of the Accion Opportunity Fund is on small businesses that have largely been crippled by this crisis. She is an innovative and fierce leader that I am always grateful to have on my side.

Luz, welcome to EMERGE Everywhere.

Luz Urrutia：
Hi Jen, how are you? Thank you.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
I’m good. I see both of us are sitting in our home offices today, but I really appreciate you coming on the show. Luz is the CEO of Opportunity Fund, now Accion Opportunity Fund. And you’ve really been at the forefront of efforts to help small businesses both before the pandemic, but particularly since. These businesses have really taken the brunt of the pandemic, particularly the services industry. And I’ve seen estimates that it could be that a third of small businesses don’t end up reopening. And particularly, now that we’re in this like one step forward, two steps back, tremendous amount of uncertainty, which I think must make it very difficult for small businesses. So how are small businesses in this country faring? Are they in the clear? Are they doing better? Paint us a little bit of a picture.

Luz Urrutia：
当然。Well, first of all, delighted to be here. Thank you again for this opportunity. Always a pleasure to spend some time with you. So Jen, I would say that first it’s important to recognize that not all businesses are created or impacted equally. So yes, many small businesses were decimated, but others report that they’ve had some of the best months during the pandemic. And it really all depends on what industry they operate, and frankly, in what state they operate. In general, we see cases were falling, states lifted all their restrictions, and then the Delta variant hit. And some restrictions have been restated, consumer confidence has definitely slowed down. We hear it from our small business owners.

Many small businesses are still struggling. And we’re not going to know the final count of how many shot and how many of those came back open until much later, I think. But businesses are saying that it’s going to take them a while to recover. There’s been a number of studies that have been done. The Harvard University data shows that 36% of California small businesses that closed during the crisis have not yet reopened. And the 11th highest number in the nation. But of course, we’re a big state. And overall, the pandemic resulted in the permanent closure of roughly 200,000 small businesses, above historical levels.

但是我们也知道，在经济不景气之后，小型企业带领。他们在大萧条之后做到了，我知道他们将再次做。但是，许多选民和伙伴关系共同努力，为他们提供所需的资源，这将需要真正的努力，以便他们可以适应，他们可以重建。同样，由于并非所有企业都是平等的，因此他们都需要不同类型的支持或不同类型的干预措施。坦率地说，有些企业无法借钱，因为debt is not a replacement for revenue.这些业务需要赠款，需要公平。其他人则需要获得资本，他们可以做到这一点。他们所有人都需要获得技术援助，业务咨询和其他支持网络的访问才能继续前进。

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
所以很多。这是很多工作。我明白你为什么这么忙。我想更深入一些需要的各种支持。但是，在我们这样做之前，就这个想法而言，小企业并非平等，它们都不同。根据谁拥有它们，它们也不同。来自所有帐户的少数民族拥有的企业都受到了更大的打击。我认为与白人企业主相比，报告说他们已经过着好关闭业务的可能性要高10％，而且名单还在继续。您对少数企业主的表现如何有什么见解？当我们考虑支持和解决方案时，他们是否面临着独特的挑战？

Luz Urrutia：
不幸的是，以上所有内容的答案是是，是，是的。众所周知，有色人种，移民和妇女拥有的企业受到影响最大。有许多调查。4月，国家倡导组织小企业多数席位发现，与一个月前相比，有36％的小型企业表示，其企业的状况有所改善。5％的人说他们正在大大改善。但是，这项调查发现，黑人拥有的小型企业继续遭受不成比例的挫折。35％的黑人企业家报告说，他们的业务状况恶化，37％的人表示他们在接下来的三个月中可能无法生存。

The same thing with a Small Business Majority survey, with our partner, Start Small Think Big, found that over half of small businesses with less than 100,000 in revenues were able to receive funding of any kind compared to 90% of larger businesses. And then when you compare white-owned businesses, 61% of small businesses owned by white owners were more likely to obtain financing compared to 50% of black and 50% of Latinx businesses.So if the question is, why did black, indigenous, and people of color owned businesses have a harder time receiving funding and are having a harder time recovering? The answer is real simple. They’ve been shut out of the traditional financial system. And as a result, they’re struggling more than their white counterparts.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
So in that context, let’s talk a little bit about Accion Opportunity Fund. In fact, you actually did a merger with Accion USA, March 11th, 2020, right on the eve of the lockdown. Talk about the organization and the role you play in supporting small businesses, and how that has evolved or changed as a result of the pandemic.

Luz Urrutia：
当然。所以你是绝对正确的。我认为是吉娜·哈蒙（Gina Harmon），您显然很了解，我讲了我们的故事。当他几乎没有滑到大门时，我们俩都感觉像在失落的方舟突袭者的著名场景中一样。但这就是我和吉娜（Gina）对这种组合的感觉。我们将机会基金和Accion Network合并了几周，几周才能在2020年3月中旬进行地位。通常在非营利组织之间很难合并，这很少发生。其中95％的失败。

But back in 2018, when I came to Opportunity Fund, succeeded Eric Weaver as the former founder and CEO. Accion had gone through their strategic plan. And they determined that they could deploy a billion dollars in capital in the next five years. Around the same time, I joined Opportunity Fund, and we had done a strategic plan that we could deploy a billion dollars in the next five years. Gina and Eric had been talking about potential combination for years. And I think that with the change of administration, me coming in new, Gina and I got together and we believed it would probably be a good time to restart conversations.

And so we looked at this from a business perspective. Why do we duplicate these exact same goals of deploying a billion dollars to underfunded small businesses across the country? Why do we raise the capital and invest in this infrastructure separately when we can do it, because we have a shared vision, a shared mission, and shared values, we could do it together and have more impact, right? And have every dollar that we raise be better leveraged. And so we were going to scale lending to businesses owned by people of color and women. We really believe there needs to be an organizational structure that’s integrated, whether it’s leadership, technology platform, credit risk, data, partnerships.

所以在一起,这就是我们正在做的事情。我们我们rking to become a national lender, that’s developing products, that is going to be transforming the model CDFIs have had in the US. It’s really hard, you and I have talked about this multiple times, to scale a lending business with boots on the ground, by itself, as your sole customer acquisition platform. And so we believe that there is an opportunity to do it more effectively, more efficiently and do it at scale. And so we’re leveraging a lot of technology. We opened up a call center, that’s now seven days a week, 15 hours a day, we’re using a lot more data analytics. We’re expanding partnerships, because we believe that the size of the problem of capital in this country is so significant that it can not be solved by one, or two, or 10 CDFIs.

It’s got to be a compilation of partnerships across private and public sector, to help us get the access to capital, and get the resources that small businesses need, while at the same time, making sure that you’re meeting the customer where they are. Not all customers are ready to get digital. Not all customers are ready to go A to Z, without having that face-to-face, or digital these days, Zoom-to-Zoom interaction, so you have to build customer service models, particularly for these communities of color, women and immigrants, that meets them where they are in their journey, and carries them and gives them access to use the resources down the road.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
Okay. There’s a lot there. We could have this conversation all day, but I want to take a step back. Go back and tell our listeners, in case they’re not familiar, a little bit more about the offerings. I could simply describe Accion Opportunity Fund as a micro business lender or small business lender, but I don’t think that would do it justice. So describe a little bit more about your offerings and who your target customers are, and also give people a sense of your scale and reach.

Luz Urrutia：
So Accion Opportunity Fund today, we are one of the leading nonprofit CDFIs, community development financial institutions, in the country, providing responsible capital, business advising, coaching, technical assistance, and other wraparound services for businesses. Nearly 90% of the businesses that we work with are owned by people of color, women and immigrants. In terms of our scale, we have a $200 million balance sheet. We have about 6,500 customers in our portfolio. The typical profile of our customers are businesses, definitely, I’d say 90 plus percent under 10 employees. The vast majority really are under three employees. So we’re working with the smallest of the smallest businesses, that really have no access to other type of financing, and have a very difficult time accessing the resources that they need in order to be able to grow and have their businesses thrive.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
And so what kind of loan sizes are typical for you?

Luz Urrutia：
So we go anywhere from $5,000 to $200,000. And I know that’s a wide range, but we work with different types of customers. One is the equipment financing. So we are the largest lender to mobile food trucks in California, as an example, which is an incredibly self-sufficient and mission-driven business. We also finance sole-owner operators of long haul trucks. The transportation industry, as you can imagine, over the last 18 months has been booming, because it has been so necessary to move goods back and forth between states, and within states.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
Let’s talk a little bit more about the policy front. There’s been a lot of action there on a number of different fronts, actually. Whether it’s low-cost capital or grants, whether it’s pushing banks to do better in their own lending records, and on and on. What are you seeing out of Washington, or frankly at the state level, that you’re excited about and where do you think we need more or different?

Luz Urrutia：
当然。因此，我认为我们都知道，看，拜登管理局，他们是CDFI的伟大支持者。CDFI基金今年早些时候启动了一项快速响应基金，向约860美元的CDFI提供了12.5亿美元的赠款。巨大的资金。这是CDFI可以用来支持社区经济困扰的资金。此外，签署了《美国救援计划法》，该法案提供了100亿美元的州小型企业信贷倡议。一个很棒的计划，可帮助贷款贷款人提供贷款损失储备，并在不同的州保证。我认为我们所有人都看到，当CDFI获得资源时，它们可以大大扩展以满足对资本的巨大需求和市场上的技术援助。

And CDFIs, for better or for worse, are truly helping these small businesses that have been left behind by the traditional financial system, whether it’s in dollars deployed, numbers of businesses that we help, their target populations that we reach. And these are really the tiny, tiny, small businesses. I will say one thing, Jen, regardless of party lines,all of us really need to rethink how we want to rebuild our economy. And supporting small businesses with resources is critical.Whether it’s capital, support networks, business advising, equity. That’s going to be a huge part of this recovery. I will say that the small business lending landscape, from a regulatory perspective, is lacking some things. So for example, if you take a look, if you go and get a mortgage today, or you buy a car, you are going to get what’s called the truth and lending disclosure. And that is going to tell you, what is your rate, what is your term, how long the loan is going to take to pay off how much you’re going to pay. None of those protections exist in small businesses. And so we think that’s a huge problem. Businesses ought to be able to make decisions for themselves and understand what type of credit they’re taking.

So having a federal, and it’s being introduced, a federal Truth in Lending Act is going to be crucial. And I would beg participants to support this, because every small business owner has the right to know what kind of credit they’re taking. The other piece is section 1071, as you know, which was part of Dodd-Frank over 10 years ago, mandate to collect data on small businesses owned by minorities and women. We need to understand who are the actors in the space that are lending to small businesses, what products are they providing and at what rates. And that, to date, hasn’t happened. We’re now reviewing the final rule, providing feedback. But golly, we need to get that implemented and we need to get it implemented soon.

我刚刚谈论的这个小型企业信用倡议非常有力，因为这为国家提供了关键的资金，因此小型企业可以获得访问权限，因为贷方现在在打开信贷框中更加自在，并能够借给那些可能会感知到的企业have higher risk, but in reality, they don’t. So a lot of things going on, a lot of things in the horizon, and we’re very excited about them.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
I want to talk about a different aspect of everyone coming together. Like you said, we need everybody involved here. And that’s the private sector. You have struck some interesting partnerships in your time at AOF. And the one that I’ve always been most taken by is the one with LendingClub. LendingClub is a very large online lender. And I believe that your partnership with them is really to help, from a scale perspective, bring more potential customers to your front door. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about how that partnership works, and what it takes for an organization like yours to be able to engage in a partnership of equals, if you will, with a large publicly traded company, that now actually also owns its own bank.

Luz Urrutia：
So the LendingClub partnership has been incredibly impactful for our organization. I think it has been mutually beneficial, which is what every partnership should be. Today, we are getting referrals from LendingClub. It is a cold marketing partnership, so all small businesses that come through the LendingClub portal are redirected to Accion Opportunity Fund. And we take those who are fitting within our target market and within our credit box, and we underwrite them and we provide capital. And then those that are outside of our target market, we are referring out to other partners, who are then doing their underwriting and providing loans, or brokering them through other sources of capital.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
路斯,你有一个迷人的职业旅程。18years of what was then what Wachovia Bank, before becoming one of the earliest innovators in FinTech, frankly, before it was even called that, back in the early 2000s, which is when we met each other. What drove you to make the shift from banking to a startup founder, and now, to running a nonprofit lending organization? What’s the through line? Help us understand you.

Luz Urrutia：
当然。So you’ve heard the story many, many times, Jen. But when I moved to the US from Venezuela to finish my undergraduate, I worked at a bank. At the time it was Wachovia Bank. And I applied for a $500 credit card, from that same very bank that I worked for. And I was turned down because as an immigrant, right out of college, I had no credit history. So they were able and willing to give me a job, but not trust me with a $500 credit card. And I learned a hard lesson, that most banks do not give credit to people with no credit. And 30 plus years later, not much of that has changed.

But I worked at the bank for 18 wonderful years. But that day I made a promise to myself that I, one day, would lead an organization and would work in bringing responsible and affordable financial services to people who don’t have access, folks like me at the time. And that’s really how I have spent the past 35 years of my career. I founded El Banco, which was that community bank in Georgia, that you were so instrumental in mentoring and helping me grow. Then leading the expansion of a growing for-profit CDFI, headquartered in the Bay Area. And then in 2017, I realized that I needed to work in an organization where I could start with a mission, and allow the mission to drive the financial sustainability of the organization. And that’s how I found my way to Accion Opportunity Fund, which gives me the opportunity to do exactly that.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
We often talk about mission and margin, and balancing those two things. And you have attempted to do that from, I think, almost every possible vantage point. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, about how particularly when an organization is attempting to scale, it can really put pressure on that idea of doing both mission and margin. What have you learned about that over the length of your career? Is it really possible to do both and continue to scale and grow one’s impact?

Luz Urrutia：
The answer is, what have I learned? It is probably the hardest, most difficult job and thing to do that I’ve ever done, and it’s also the most rewarding. You know that, because again, you’ve been on this journey with me as a mentor, as a confident, as a supporter.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
We’re like a mutual fan club. Right back at you.

Luz Urrutia：
是的。是的。是的,我们是。我们是来旅游的。但是我想说at I see firsthand, and I have seen this, whether it’s in the for-profit or now in the nonprofit world,that when we focus on building a more inclusive financial system, one that helps to bring everyone along and provides people the opportunity to chart their own path, we, as an organization, can affect profound economic and social changes.And by helping others, our organizations, again, for-profit and nonprofit, we become stronger, and we are in a much better position to scale and help more people for generations to come.

And so, I don’t think that those mission and margin always are equally weighted, at every meeting and at every decision, but all-in-all, when you look at the overall portfolio and the overall things that the organization is doing, there has to be a balance. Because I always say, if there’s no margin, you really cannot execute the mission at scale. But if you don’t have a mission, your business survivability over time and your success is going to decline.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
Luz, you have increasingly been recognized as an incredible, innovative leader. You were just named Forbes 50 Over 50. You’re increasingly heralded and seen as the leader that you are. You’re also increasingly recognized as a critical leader in the Latinx community. This is Hispanic Heritage Month, I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on that. You told us your story of coming to this country, and the fact that you were not from this country made it difficult for you to get credit, and that launched the rest of your life’s mission and purpose. How do you bring your sense of identity to the work that you do?

Luz Urrutia：
Wow. That’s a very important, powerful question, and an emotional one, frankly. It’s interesting, because当我看着我的事业,我可以确定每一个罪gle thing I’ve done to the efforts of others around me.Nothing that I have accomplished, from learning English, to starting to work at a bank, to getting a graduate degree, it has always been fueled by mentors, and sponsors, and friends, who believed I could do it.

And my parents, my mother in particular, she always said to me, “If you don’t do it and fail, you will never learn, so you’ve got to move forward. And wherever you go, do not let gender, race, age, get in the way. Always look to leave every situation better than when you got to it.” And so to me, I don’t look at what I’ve done as something extraordinary. I do look at the people that have surrounded me as being extraordinary, and having believed in me, and having given me the opportunity to believe in myself, that this all can get done. If you put your heart, and your mind, and your purpose to it, you can do it. And so it’s a community effort.My life has been about community. It has not been about any individual accomplishments that I’ve made on my own.

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
I think that is a great place to end our conversation. Luz Urrutia, thank you so much for joining me on EMERGE Everywhere.

Luz Urrutia：
非常感谢，詹。与你在一起总是很高兴。

詹妮弗·特舍尔（Jennifer Tescher）：
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