Currently, Grameen America has invested over $1.8 billion in more than 135,000 low-income women entrepreneurs since opening in January 2008.

In 2013, Grameen America and Mambu partnered to replace the lender’s custom-built legacy system with a modern, cloud-native platform that would enable the organization to rapidly scale and streamline operations, and be easily accessed from a mobile device, providing an enhanced user experience. Grameen America strategically rolled out Mambu’s platform region by region, completing the national launch over the course of nine months. Following the move to the cloud, the company reported significant loan processing improvements, improved data accuracy and data analytics, as well as enhanced internal and external auditing capabilities including the ability to conduct surprise audits and/or quickly detect fraud based on data irregularities. The organization’s loan transaction time was reduced by 50% and the caseload benchmark grew by 25%. Since Grameen America moved to 100% digital disbursements and repayments, the organization has become more than 60% financially sustainable.

“We are pleased to extend our partnership with Mambu, given the important role they continue to play in enabling our capacity to scale," said Andrea Jung, President and CEO of Grameen America. “Mambu shares our commitment to constant innovation, leveraging technology to empower individuals, while streamlining and improving operating efficiency and effectiveness. Mambu’s platform has enabled Grameen America to transform our member experience and provide powerful digital solutions to further accelerate our organization’s growth and impact for women entrepreneurs nationwide.”

Mambu is changing the market through its composable approach, which is the quick and flexible assembly of independent best-of-breed vendors. Through open APIs, Mambu seamlessly integrates with other off-the-shelf software solutions, providing Grameen America’s borrowers an even greater user experience, as well as sophisticated digital tools and services. For example, Grameen America implemented compliance-related software and disbursement cards for loans quickly and easily. Mambu’s solution is more agile and cost-effective than its previous legacy platform. Through this platform, Mambu enabled Grameen America to build a modern lending system offering in the cloud by composing the best product for its specific needs.

“We’re super excited to be a part of Grameen America’s impact!” said Johanna Pugh, Managing Director North America, Mambu. “Now more than ever, Grameen America is making a difference in so many communities by playing a key role in their economic recoveries. Aligned with our own mission to make financial services accessible to all, we are proud to play a role in helping the organization achieve its goals and reach even more women entrepreneurs. As we continue to see demand for more agile and digital solutions for every facet of the population in the U.S. and globally, our partnership reinforces our ambition to bring innovative technology into the digital first-world to help create better financial services and experiences for millions of individuals.”

Grameen America launched in New York in 2008 to provide small loans, credit and asset building, and financial education programs to women entrepreneurs who live below the poverty line. The strength of Grameen America’s model is its focus on community lending where the peer support and monitoring system serves as a strong motivator for each borrower to repay their loan. Since its launch, Grameen America has disbursed more than $1.8 billion in loans to more than 134,500 borrowers.