How Technology Led to the Empowerment of Women Lenders and Borrowers

Abstract

This case centers on Grameen America and its rollout of an iPad-based cloud banking system, which not only increased organizational efficiency and efficacy, it further provided greater transparency to a largely Latina population of loan officers and their borrowers. The case study touches on the following points: • How putting technology in the hands of front-line loan officers empowered them to make better “in the moment” lending decisions with respect to their women borrowers. • How giving data access to women borrowers not only gave them real-time access to the status of their loans, but provided access to other potential banking products, too. • How all levels of the organization benefited from moving to a cloud-based financial system, eliminating the previous “locking and holding” of loan information within local branches.