CDFIs may be able to help reduce those discrepancies by using their local knowledge and financial expertise to offer alternatives to conventional subprime lending. The Opportunity Finance Network, for instance, will be competing with subprime lenders via a mortgage-credit platform that centralizes some CDFI lending processes and directly links counseling and lending services.
At the same time, CDFIs continue to expand their ability to attract private investment funds, for example, through increasing transparency and developing the means of providing objective evaluations of their financial and mission-related effectiveness. These efforts demonstrate the ability of CDFIs to adapt their business strategies to evolving markets, as indeed they have done throughout their thirty-year history.