Frank Altman

An experienced business executive and author, Frank Altman is founder of Community Reinvestment Fund, USA, commonly referred to as CRF, a national community development financial institution, that has delivered billions of dollars in capital to borrowers located in more than a thousand mostly low-income communities throughout the United States. A pioneer in the field of ESG, investments that consider Environmental, Social and Governance factors, Altman innovated socially responsible debt securities backed by pools of community development loans. These instruments enabled ESG investors on Wall Street and in the capital markets to support the capital needs of low-income people and business borrowers located primarily in low-income communities. CRF's debt products pursue socially responsible and compelling community impacts while also delivering competitive financial returns. In 2000 Altman helped gain passage of the New Markets Tax Credit, a federal tax credit aimed at attracting investments in low-income communities. He was founding president of the NMTC Coalition and a member of its board of directors. . In 2011 he launched CRF Small Business Loan Company. Under Altman's leadership CRF SBLC has become the largest nonprofit SBA guaranteed small business lender in the country. When the COVID crisis hit, CRF SBLC began making Paycheck Protection Program loans to very small women- and BIPOC-owned businesses. During the COVID crisis, CRF SBLC originated more than three thousand PPP loans exceeding six hundred million dollars. Altman is also past chair of Ignify Technologies, Inc. A SaaS company, Ignify Technologies operates Spark, a best-in-class technology platform for the origination of business loans including SBA loans. Spark was an invaluable platform for the origination of PPP loans by CRF and numerous banks and financial institutions. He has also served on the board of US SIF, the forum for sustainable and responsible investing; the CDFI Coalition; the Minnesota Housing Partnership Network, and the Center for Community Development Investments at the San Francisco Fed and is currently a director of Babban Gona, a social enterprise in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an advisor to the Center for Impact Finance at the University of New Hampshire, and the Swearer Center at Brown University and a founding member of the Financial Innovations Roundtable sponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He also serves on the Community Advisory Council for U.S. Bank. He also served for 10 years as a director of Franklin National Bank, and he chaired the board of trustees of the College of Visual Arts.