Kansas City-based Lead Bank added two new partnerships with financial technology companies, enabling it to make small-dollar loans and establish a stronger network of disabled clients and businesses.
One partnership was with LoanMe, a comprehensive fintech lending platform based in Anaheim, California, that offers small-dollar personal and business loans completely online. Lead Bank is a lender on the platform, so existing and non-Lead Bank clients fill out an online loan application and get funded without leaving their home.
“These are consumer installment loans,” said Josh Rowland, Lead Bank's CEO and vice chairman. “They’re small, typically around $1,000, but they provide an incredibly important service.”
In July, LoanMe was acquired by a Canadian special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC) called NextPoint Acquisition Corp., which also acquired Liberty Tax services at the same time. The loans are available through Liberty Tax as well.
Interest rates depend on the term length and the applicant's creditworthiness. It can range from 9.9% to 98% a year for personal loans and 14.9% to 149% a year for business loans.
Lead Bank also formed a partnership with Leawood-based InReturn Strategies. Founded in 2012, InReturn helps companies strengthen their diversity and inclusion models, by helping businesses build stronger connections with disabled and other underserved populations.
“The idea here is that there's a kind of a really magical combination that can be established where you're both simultaneously seeking out qualified people with disabilities to work in your company and also getting introduced to great companies that are serving disabled people and their families with products and service,” Rowland said. “So I think it's really an incredibly thoughtful win-win kind of strategy for a company like ours, which takes diversity, inclusion and accessibility really seriously. We owe it to all the marginalized communities in our society to think very hard about how we can demarginalize them and bring them into a fuller dialogue and a fuller kind of relationship with other parts of the community.”
Lead Bank is using InReturn to help with product and service design, marketing materials, website and job descriptions, to ensure that it’s accessible and inclusive.
“These people have talents to offer Lead bank and the rest of Kansas City, so how can we be better attuned to that to really serve them, be in community with them and deliver something extraordinary?” Rowland said.
