Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett on Tuesday convened lender and financial partners at the Rural Development National Lender Forum to strengthen public-private partnerships and expand access to capital in rural communities using a OneUSDA approach.
USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Censky, Rural Development agency administrators and other senior program executives joined Hazlett to share ideas on how to better co-finance rural economic development needs by strengthening collaboration with lending partners.
In support of Innovation Month, the Rural Development Innovation Center organized and facilitated this event to enable a diversity of lender partners to begin strategic dialogue on issues of mutual interest.
Participant ideas included:
• establishing creative financing;
• streamlining regulation;
• modernizing processes and;
• developing joint education and outreach of program resources
The Innovation Center will use these ideas to inform future solutions that support USDA’s priorities in improving customer experience. The forum will help drive additional public-private partnerships that increase opportunity to leverage resources that maximize limited financing.
The forum included representatives from National Cooperative Bank, credit unions, community banks, state-regulated bond banks, mortgage lenders, capital markets, community development financial institutions, and Farm Credit systems such as CoBank.
For more information on the Rural Development Innovation Center, visit www.usda.gov/rdinnovation.