Suazo Center receives federal CDFI designation allowing it to make loans

The Suazo Business Center, a Salt Lake City nonprofit dedicated to business and economic development for the region’s Hispanic, Latino and other minority communities, has received certification as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), meaning it can now make loans to the area’s minority businesses. The certification came from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The CDFI designation is held by fewer than 1,500 financial institutions and community organizations nationwide. Suazo Business Center joins only five other organizations in Utah with the designation. Given by Treasury’s CDFI Fund, the certification provides financial services in low-income communities and to people who lack access to financing.

“For 20 years, the Suazo Center has been offering direct funding resources to its clients. We are excited to be able to expand our Access to Capital programming by now having the opportunity to utilize resources from the CDFI Fund to provide financial products and services directly to our community’s underserved minority business enterprises,” said the Suazo Business Center’s president and CEO, Silvia Castro. “These resources will go toward starting and expanding businesses and creating jobs by offering financing solutions needed to provide vital services to our communities. We finance small businesses and other types of investments that spark economic growth and development in underserved communities across Utah. Using creative and innovative financing products, the Center can provide loans and financial services to communities with scarce resources.”

J.P. Morgan Chase, a longtime supporter of the Suazo Business Center, provided a donation to aid in developing Suazo’s bid to become a CDFI-certified lending organization.

“We are pleased by the work being done at the Suazo Business Center and are encouraged by their efforts of becoming CDFI certified,” said Danielle Wright, head of J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Utah. “The programs and support Suazo provide to Utah’s minority business community are unmatched in the state, and we are honored to play a part in that success.”

Castro said that in the coming months, the Suazo Business Center will launch its CDFI loan program to expand borrowing capacity to Utah’s minority business enterprises. With offices in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and now with a location in St. George located at Utah Tech University, the center provides one-on-one mentorship; a series of academic classes offered in three different track;s and community outreach through a business workshop program, offering specialized assistance on many business and economic development topics.

The Suazo Business Center was founded 2002 and has assisted in educating, growing and developing more than 10,000 clients and small businesses. The center has created more than 6,000 new small businesses and helped generate billions of dollars in revenues as an investment into Utah’s local economies.