Tiffany Callender, chief executive officer of FACE, said her organization is able to help Black entrepreneurs access loans by, for example, accepting lower credit scores than most banks will, which may be useful to new Canadians who havenât had enough time to build up their credit.
âWe define what is risk,â Ms. Callender said. âWe are able to decide what the floor is for credit scores. And what else we can see as being of value to the business. We can look at and contextualize more than just the numbers. Because the people who are administering the loan fund are from that community as well.â
The financial partners of the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, Vancity and Alterna, are also running a microloan credit program, which provides loans of between $10,000 and $25,000 to Black business owners in British Columbia and Ontario. It is built on other micro loan programs the credit unions had been running for years.Larger financial institutions are also taking some steps to connect better with Black communities.
For example, last year Toronto-Dominon Bank launched a strategy to rebuild trust with Black customers by hiring more Black staff and conducting anti-Black racism training for employees, including credit adjudicators.
Al Ramsay, vice-president of LGBTQ2+ and Black customer segments at TD, said the bank is committed to becoming an authentic ally to Black communities and is holding focus groups to better understand the issues Black customers are facing.
But while TD has donated $10-million to the Black Opportunity Fund, a charity formed by a group of Bay Street leaders, it has not joined the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund or similar credit programs. And Mr. Ramsay said the bank has no plans to make institutional changes, such as reforming its loan criteria, which Black business owners have said unfairly exclude them.
âOur approach to this is itâs not going to be solved by a loan program per se,â Mr. Ramsay said. âIt will be solved by us delivering the bank and having our employees out there, on the front lines, working with the community to give them that access to capital.â
Ms. Kasandy eventually did manage to quit her marketing career and open her own business in 2015: a fair-trade home goods store on Vancouverâs Granville Island. Because she couldnât get a loan, she said, she used a combination of her personal savings and credit cards to launch the business. Two years in, she said, she was offered a business loan of just $30,000 â far less than the $1-million in sales the business did in a year.
To help other Black entrepreneurs access financing, she co-founded a new group called the Black Entrepreneurs and Businesses of Canada Society. On Thursday, the group will hold its inaugural Black Business Summit, where Ms. Kasandy said she hopes to bring together business owners and representatives from financial institutions and government, to work together on ways of knocking down some of the systemic barriers faced by Black entrepreneurs.
âWeâre not looking for handouts,â Ms. Kasandy said. âWeâre just looking for the opportunity to be counted like everyone else.â
