2024 CBA Credit Building Symposium

Now in its 11th year, the Credit Building Symposium is a two-and-a-half-day event in Washington. DC. This year’s event will explore our theme, Connecting Communities Through Credit. Attendees will learn more about the latest innovations in credit building and network with your peers. Participants include Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), nonprofit financial coaches/counselors/educators, philanthropists, allies, partner organizations, Tribal Entities, nonprofit lenders, government agencies, credit reporting agencies (CRAs), FinTechs, regulators, and anyone who cares about increasing credit access to those who need it.

The first day of the event is a Practitioner Training Day, which includes a bootcamp focused on understanding FICO ® Scores as well as sessions that dive into credit coaching in an increasingly online world, credit-focused programming with vulnerable populations, and insights from behavioral science that help explain loan repayment rates and strategies. The day concludes with a practitioner listening session focused on understanding challenges and opportunities for credit coaches and counselors.

The main Symposium will then take place over the remaining day and a half. Our keynote sessions include lessons on making coalitions work with shared agendas and the myth of financial success when individuals “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Breakout sessions with focus on innovations in cashflow underwriting, programmatic work to narrow the racial credit divide, credit building for people with disabilities, and building community partnerships. Other sessions will highlight the impact of medical debt, impact-based lending, and credit deserts and other areas that lack access to credit, including tribal lands. The event will conclude with a range of breakouts focused on community foundation investments in nonprofits, nonprofit lenders with a racial equity lens, Islamic-compliant lending, and guaranteed income as a tool for credit building.

Attendees will gain insight into new tools to support program participants in accessing supportive resources and developing plans to build credit and achieve financial success. Focuses on lending, coaching/counseling, and industry or policy developments will also help practitioners understand new program options to incorporate into their own work and to build partnerships with other organizations.