2018 FIR Summary

Over the past eighteen years, the Financial Innovations Roundtable (FIR), located at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire and hosted by the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board, has worked with a range of community development and other types of financial institutions, government agencies, foundations and trade associations to address and solve problems related to access to capital for low-and moderate-income consumers and communities. The FIR does this by tapping the expertise of thought leaders from the institutional investment, banking, philanthropic, and community development industries.

The 2018 Financial Innovations Roundtable was entitled “Financial Innovations to Improve Economic Resiliency in Rural Communities”, and brought together impact investors and community development practitioners to explore the barriers and opportunities for how mission-based financial institutions can support rural communities. Conversations focused around:

• New service delivery models for remote and/or small population areas
• Innovative ways that mission-based financial institutions can step in to provide or support rural economic development infrastructure when other local capacity is limited
• Strategies to “wrangle capital” to rural communities and the mission-based financial institutions that serve them
• Roles that regional networks for funding and financing could play to serve rural regions
• The importance of partnerships to both deploy capital and build local community development capacity
• Needs for financing rural housing and rural broadband infrastructure