Hello Alice Business Health Engine

GEN Global, in partnership with Hello Alice, have launched an Equitable Access Program, aimed at high-potential underserved entrepreneurs with credit challenges. A core component of this program is pioneering Hello Alice's Business Health Engine, rooted in risk models from thousands of financial institutions, with the Business Health Score tool. Hello Alice has 1.3MM+ business owners on the platform, and business health is now part of the onboarding process. 

The Business Health Score is a self-assessment questionnaire, resulting in a composite number that is calculated based on three key areas that impact a business's financial health: financial and business management practices, financial performance and position, and credit history. 

By focusing on these areas, small businesses will have the tools to increase revenues, improve cash flows, and increase access to financing.

In a world where 85% of small business credit card applications are denied due to poor or lack of credit, the Business Health Score is more than just a tool—it's a lifeline. It offers unparalleled visibility, empowering businesses to strategize for growth, while providing financial institutions with insights to tailor their offerings, through a real-time recommendation engine. Tangible & personalized resources are  provided to owners based on results. This tool is ready-available on the SaaS platform with the assessment recommended to be retaken every 90 days.

The score provides a measurement of the risk profile of a small business owner beyond a regular credit score. This new set of data fills a gap in the market, building equitable access for SMBs. 

GEN Global and Hello Alice are committed to helping small businesses achieve success by providing access to the knowledge, capital, networks, and services they need. We are dedicated to solving credit barriers for Small Business Owners in the New Majority: BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, female, military connected and founders with disabilities. As part of this commitment, we collect data from small business owners to help them understand and improve their business performance. This data includes information about financial management practices, financial performance and position, and credit history.

We collect this data in a secure and responsible manner, following best practices for data privacy and security. We are SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and PCI certified, which means that we have met the highest standards for data security and protection. We use this data only to provide personalized recommendations and resources to small business owners, and we do not share it with third parties without the business owner's consent.

Hello Alice is a fintech company partnered with GEN Global. It is a SaaS platform, and the Business Health Engine utilizes content management data analysis tools.

• Our platform provides personalization to our users to provide unique and relevant experiences for our small business owners
• Our tech stack showcases a never-before scoring of business health to enable under-served entrepreneurs to minimize risk for capital and financial access, as opposed to standard credit challenges. 
• The Hello Alice Platform is a 100% serverless, cloud based solution which allows our services to scale as our small business owner base grows. 
• Our user experience is designed as mobile first to allow ease of use to accommodate our "on-the-go" base from their mobile devices. 
• Our front app is built as a Single Page App (NextJS) to provide a modern experience to allow for speedy delivery of content without the need for constant page refreshes. 
• Our UI powered by API-first architecture leverages GraphQL to serve our user's content. 
• Our technology stack allows us to remain flexible while providing continuous roll-out new features and updates to our users quickly.

This solution is built for business owners in under-represented communities, as we refer to as the New Majority: BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, female, military connected and founders with disabilities. These groups are typically lacking capital and high credit scores, providing significant barriers when attempting to gain loans, leases or other financial avenues. Financial institutions rely on credit scores, or existing revenue, as a sole indicator of potential. This creates a loop of inaccessibility and inequitable opportunity for groups without the same means to build credit or lean on existing capital.  Most users on our platform have under 10 employees, with almost 50% operating as a sole employee and nearly 50% operating with under $50k in annual revenue. These individuals do not have access to grow their means or businesses, thus by providing a reputable new means to establish a risk profile beyond credit score to share outwards, this is a new opportunity. Owners are also presented with tangible guidance on how to achieve next steps on their own, as opposed to going down the rabbit hole of inaccessible resources.

This solution is a direct framework for financial readiness and data and impact. This solution provides not only alternative funding sources to SMB owners but tangible guidance and development of methods to improve their business health and an area to point to for minimizing credit risk. This is all done through data collection and business intelligence, mapping back out to individual and community impact.

The inputs for the Business Health Score are derived from the 3 core areas from a Small Business Owner within the questionnaire on the SaaS platform: financial and business management practices, financial performance and position, and credit history. These are the activities as entered by the owners, with the outputs being the score in each area as driven by the recommendation engine AND the tangible resources for owners to received based on their score. This leads to short term outcomes of improved financial and business management practices, financial performance and position, and credit history for each owner which leads to sustainable businesses and economic growth. The long term outcome is resiliency and minimized barriers for capital and credit for SMBs in under-represented communities and therefore progress towards the estimated $40 billion annually of unmet financing demand from BIPOC-owned employers that applied for financing and estimated $1 trillion in unmet financing demand from all small businesses nationally. This technology means SMBs in the new majority have access to capital without credit barriers and means the economy thrives through equitable lending and sustained growth.

There are currently 1.3MM small business owners on the platform. 30,000 have currently taken the score since pilot in March.

Despite 10.5 million Americans starting new businesses in the past two years, diverse small business owners still face significant disparities in accessing capital. This lack of access hinders their business growth, job creation, and overall economic impact in their communities. 

There is an estimated $40 billion annually of unmet financing demand from BIPOC-owned employers that applied for financing, and an estimated $1 trillion in unmet financing demand from all small businesses nationally.

 At the core the barriers to capital:

• Nine out of ten small business owners heavily rely on their personal credit score when seeking financing. 

• Black and Latinx entrepreneurs have historically had credit scores that are 2-3x lower than their white counterparts

• Women and US Veterans often face financing barriers due to a lack of credit history.

Despite these challenges, according to Hello Alice data 90% of small business owners without business credit believe access to credit or a business card would impact their business in a positive way.

Three years from now, projected outcomes from the GEN Global program with Hello Alice will come to life through:

• 30,000 entrepreneurs will grow their business and personal credit scores

• 16,000 entrepreneurs will grow their revenue

• 9,000 entrepreneurs will hire new employees

• 7,000 businesses will eventually qualify for mainstream bank capital solutions

The GEN Global Equitable Access Program and Business Health Score is implemented on the Hello Alice platform, which sees 67% female owners and 83% BIPOC owners. The stakeholders are the small business owners around the country as well as a range of social enterprise and broader enterprise partners, creating diverse programming.  

Trust is built and established through ongoing access to true programs, grants, opportunities for capital advancement. With established and trusted enterprise partners, GEN Global and Hello Alice have reached millions of SMBs. Our newsletters have the highest open rate with regular 60% open and engagement. Our in person events garner community interaction and 70% RSVP rate with 30% attendance. These numbers indicate the strength and trust built from ongoing means and guidance to improvement and shown care to the under-represented growth. For the BHS, the outreach has been through newsletters, press releases, social media campaigns and videos. 

• 30,000 entrepreneurs will grow their business and personal credit scores

• 16,000 entrepreneurs will grow their revenue

• 9,000 entrepreneurs will hire new employees

• 7,000 businesses will eventually qualify for mainstream bank capital solutions

An accompanying small business credit card and Equitable Access Fund with lead partners are building the track for this impact, as well as continued grants programs and accelerator education programs for SMBs. 

GEN Global is applying to the Truist Foundation Inspire Awards as a 501c3 with Hello Alice in order to continue to successfully grow millions of companies by ensuring business for all, including women, people of color, veterans, and every American with an entrepreneurial spirit. Together, through technology and grants programs, we impact under-served communities around the country.  One of the key barriers we mentioned is increase in programs and continuing to define, find and develop programs and partners to continue to offer the tools as free resources to entrepreneurs. This grant increases awareness and capital to even more small business owners, driving the mission forward.

Grants towards the BIPOC community scaled after 2020, yet as enterprise priorities and programs evolve we too need to shift the business model to adapt and create long-standing solutions that are financially scalable for SMBs (free to low cost) while also maintain ability for our programs to continue to be offered (funding).  The innovation is in the tech and the awareness, the continued access and accuracy is in 3rd party data integrations and continued co-promotions to push progress forward.