July 17, 2026

SoLo Funds and Financial Inclusion: Banking the Underbanked Through Community

Quick Take

Financial inclusion refers to ensuring that all people have access to useful and affordable financial products and services. In the United States, millions of people remain underserved or excluded from traditional financial systems.
SoLo Funds is a peer-to-peer community marketplace designed specifically to serve people who have been left out: those with thin credit histories, damaged credit, irregular income, or limited access to traditional banking.
The platform removes the credit score gate that blocks access for many Americans and replaces it with a community-based trust metric built through behavior on the platform.
Funding is not guaranteed and is subject to lender acceptance. Tips are voluntary and set by the borrower.

Good to Know

SoLo does not report to the major credit bureaus. Third-party collectors may have different reporting practices.
Funding is not guaranteed and is subject to lender acceptance. Tips are voluntary and set by the borrower.
Returns are not guaranteed and the loan amount may be lost. Never lend money you cannot afford to lose.
SoLo uses a bank partner (Member FDIC). Pass-through insurance may apply. Check the Terms.

The term financial inclusion gets used often in policy conversations and corporate social responsibility reports, but what it actually means is straightforward. Some people have reliable, affordable, and fair access to financial tools that help them manage money, build savings, access credit, and grow wealth. Many people do not. The gap between those two groups in the United States is large, persistent, and not an accident.

SoLo Funds was built specifically to close that gap.

The Scale of the Problem

When SoLo founders Rodney Williams and Travis Holloway began researching the financial landscape, they found that 198 million Americans need access to flexible capital, while another 56 million need better tools to grow their savings. These are not edge cases. They represent the majority of the country.

The people most affected are disproportionately from Black and Latino communities, from lower-income households, from communities where traditional banks have pulled back their physical presence, and from economic circumstances where a single financial shock can become a cascading crisis. These are not people who are irresponsible with money. They are people for whom the financial system was not designed.

How the Traditional System Excludes

The primary gate to most traditional financial products is a FICO credit score. This score is built from your history with credit cards, loans, and other products that require credit to access in the first place. For people without that history, the circular logic is inescapable. You cannot build credit without credit. You cannot access affordable credit without an established credit score. The result is that the people who most need affordable borrowing access are precisely the people the traditional system blocks.

Beyond credit scores, traditional banks have additional barriers. Minimum balance requirements, overdraft fee structures, geographic concentration in higher-income areas, and loan minimums that are far above what most people actually need for short-term gaps all contribute to a system that serves some Americans very well and leaves many others without meaningful options.

How SoLo Reframes the Problem

SoLo Funds replaces the credit score gate with a community trust metric. The SoLo Score, ranging from 0 to 99, is built entirely from behavior within the SoLo platform. It does not factor in your FICO score, your banking history, or your credit file. It reflects how you treat your commitments to the community that is choosing to back you.

This is not just a product decision. It is a philosophical one. The founders of SoLo grew up in communities that experienced the exclusionary side of traditional finance firsthand. The platform they built reflects the belief that financial trustworthiness is demonstrated through behavior, not inherited through a credit history that many Americans never had the opportunity to build.

The P2P Model as an Inclusion Engine

Peer-to-peer lending has an inherent financial inclusion property that direct-lender models do not. When a company funds advances from its own balance sheet, it applies a uniform risk model that excludes the same people the traditional system excludes. When a community of individual lenders funds requests from individuals they review, the evaluation is human rather than algorithmic. A lender browsing the SoLo marketplace sees a real person’s request with a real explanation, and may be more willing to back someone a credit algorithm would reject.

For a deeper explanation of how the P2P model works on SoLo, see our article on what peer-to-peer lending is and how SoLo uses it.

Both Sides of the Marketplace Matter

Financial inclusion is not just about access to borrowing. It is also about access to ways of building and growing money. SoLo’s lender side is a financial inclusion feature as much as the borrower side. Any member can become a lender and may earn returns by funding community requests. This means that members in modest financial circumstances, with even small amounts available to deploy, have access to a way of putting that capital to work that has historically only been available to people with significant wealth.

Returns are not guaranteed and the loan amount may be lost. Never lend money you cannot afford to lose. For members who want to explore the lending side, see our lender guide and our overview of how smart lenders think before funding.

Recognition of the Model

The financial inclusion impact of SoLo’s approach has not gone unnoticed. The platform has been named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, recognized by Fast Company as a World Changing Idea, and has attracted investment from Serena Ventures, the fund backed by Serena Williams. More than 3 million app downloads and $700 million in loans powered represent the real-world scale of the impact. For more on SoLo’s founding story and mission, see our article on how SoLo Funds is reinventing banking for every American.

Access Is Not Enough

Financial inclusion is not only about opening the door. It is about what is behind it. SoLo provides access to short-term borrowing, a pathway to building a community trust score, access to AI financial coaching through SoLo IQ, a Mastercard debit card, and the ability to become a lender. These are not token features for underserved communities. They are the same tools that every SoLo member, at any income level, uses to manage their financial life on the platform.

SoLo FAQ: How does borrowing work?
SoLo FAQ: How does lending work?
SoLo FAQ: What is the SoLo Score?

Built for every American, not just the ones the banks already serve. Download SoLo Funds today.

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