Why is the path to financing for small businesses never a straight line, according to Colleen Ebbett?
Colleen Ebbett is clear: SMEs do not move through financing in a single upward progression from CDFIs to mainstream banks. They borrow from different sources depending on what they need at any given moment. A CDFI can help unlock a bank loan at one stage — and that same bank may later decline to serve that business, sending it back to its CDFI. Maintaining relationships with multiple types of lenders is not a sign of failure; it is the smart, strategic approach.
This framing cuts against a common assumption in the financial ecosystem: that CDFIs are a stepping stone to be left behind once a business graduates to "real" banking. Ebbett rejects that model entirely. The reality of small business growth is uneven — markets shift, circumstances change, risk profiles fluctuate — and the financing landscape needs to reflect that. CDFIs are not a remedial option; they are a permanent, legitimate part of the funding mix. Their focus is structural: in the UK, more than 60% of CDFI loans reach underserved communities, 41% go to women-led businesses, and 24% to ethnic minority entrepreneurs — populations that mainstream lenders consistently under-serve regardless of business maturity.
JPMorgan Chase's £4 million capacity-building initiative with Responsible Finance — announced in November 2024 alongside the British Business Bank's £150 million Community Enabled Fund — is built precisely around this logic. Strengthening CDFI operations and deployment capacity matters not because CDFIs are a temporary fix, but because they occupy a permanent and distinct role in a healthy, inclusive lending ecosystem.
"For economic growth to reach all areas of the country, particularly underserved or under-invested regions, it has to be intentionally inclusive."
— Colleen Ebbett, JPMorgan Chase · The Responsible Finance Podcast
Daniel Davis joined First Enterprise on 2 January 2024, bringing with him a background built around digital transformation, operational improvement, and direct engagement with small and medium-sized businesses. Unlike many CDFI professionals who come from a purely financial background, Davis has worked directly inside businesses and has run his own venture — giving him a practitioner's understanding of the pressures, decision-making cycles, and financing realities that SMEs actually face day to day.
He arrived at First Enterprise with a specific mandate: improve the organisation's internal operations and sharpen its ability to serve underserved communities more efficiently. In the context of this episode, his experience grounds the discussion of non-linear financing in operational reality — he knows what it looks like when a business needs to pivot between funding sources, because he has lived it. His perspective on the lending journey complements Colleen Ebbett's structural analysis with a ground-level view of what inclusive finance actually requires in practice.