CURRENT
Director of Technology and Data Analytics
HQ: Bala Cynwyd, PA
484-436-4466 • contextBL.com
Context Business Lending’s dedication to updating the asset-based lending industry took another step this year, as it hired a dedicated director of technology and data analytics and created a new centralized data repository.
Context Business Lending’s mission is to disrupt the archaic world of asset-based lending. CBL embraces technology and data to push the envelope and innovate to solve business problems and identify new business opportunities. It is dedicated to optimizing its customers’ internal efficiencies and understanding the data that underlies their businesses to help them make better decisions.
This year, CBL’s CEO, Meredith Carter, cemented her commitment to advancing the company through technology by hiring Joy Hanawa, an industry technology veteran, as CBL’s first dedicated director of technology and data analytics. Hanawa has spent her career turning data, analytics and web-based applications into progressive B2B and B2C business opportunities, having designed and launched dozens of successful software-as-a-service products and portals throughout her career. She has already started to make a significant contribution to CBL’s infrastructure by designing analytics tools that are helping the company make more strategic decisions while developing an all cloud, fully-remote data strategy.
CBL has also begun creating a new centralized data repository that will be tied to new technologies, including artificial intelligence tools. CBL believes to move forward, it must always question the reason for established practices and then consider whether there is a better way to do things. It seeks to identify the “white spaces” in specialty finance — areas where other lenders can’t lend because of regulatory reasons or because borrowers are in disfavored industries — and then design custom working capital solutions to optimize availability for companies that fall within those spaces. The company’s goal is to apply its freedom from regulation and tradition to solve more problems for lower middle-market businesses.
“Innovation for CBL means we are rethinking our business from the inside out, constantly challenging norms and finding novel ways to provide value to our borrowers.”
