LOS ANGELES, June 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lendistry, the leading fintech Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), announced today that founder and CEO Everett K. Sands will be a panelist at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Finance virtual conversation, “Banking While Black”, to be held June 17.

According to FORTUNE, the conversation will ask “executives from banks, fintech companies and startups about what the finance industry can do differently to ensure finance is fair and open to everyone.”

Lendistry ranks second nationwide in SBA Community Advantage lending, providing responsible financing to small business owners and their underserved communities. Lendistry’s partnerships with more than 40 financial institutions provide them operational efficiencies that make it easier for very small and very large institutions alike to be part of the solution for underserved small businesses.

Mr. Sands founded Lendistry in 2015, at the age of 37, with the goal of making funding more accessible for small business owners, particularly those in underserved communities. Over his more than 20-year banking career, Mr. Sands has served as a board member and executive with two minority depository institutions in Baltimore and led teams at Wells Fargo. Lendistry’s minority- and women-led executive team has more than 160 years of banking experience with institutions including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase & Co., CIT, Comerica, Disney, Intuit, Morgan Stanley, Securities & Exchange Commission, and Wells Fargo.

Lendistry’s scalable platform has enabled it to approve Paycheck Protection Program loans for more than 2300 small businesses (as of June 12), 73% of which are from underserved demographics. In the two months since opening its www.mylendistry.com application portal, Lendistry has approved, in PPP loan dollars, approximately 150% of its total loan origination volume during the 4.5 years from its 2015 inception to April 2020.  

The Company’s nonprofit affiliate, The Center by Lendistry, is dedicated to providing charitable and educational holistic solutions for small businesses, including coaching sessions, training videos, and networking opportunities. The Center’s goal is to increase financial education, enhance small business sophistication, and strengthen owners’ abilities to succeed.

About Lendistry
Lendistry is a minority-led CDFI and CDE small business and commercial real estate fintech lender. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Lendistry is a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.