With six branches throughout the Southern crescent, Atlanta’s Heritage Bank has joined forces with Fayetteville, GA-based Diversified Funding Services to offer accounts receivable factoring, AR/ABL credit lines and other back office managed services to businesses throughout Georgia and the U.S.

With the local economy surging, both Heritage and Diversified Funding saw a clear need to offer these services to local businesses and entrepreneurs.

The expanded services will operate under the subsidiary HB Funding Services, serviced and managed by Diversified Funding Services. It will also provide a suite of back office management options for small businesses, including receivables management, receivables collection and credit monitoring for vendors.

“Heritage has spent decades trying to meet the capital needs of its commercial clients, and this new partnership will open new avenues for our clients to be able to better utilize their assets to help their companies grow and prosper,” Heritage Bank President and CEO Leonard Moreland said.

“Nothing replaces the need for relationships. Working with a community bank isn’t, ‘Here’s the money now pay it back.’ We have a connection to the ultimate survival of the company because it is a partnership,” said Diversified Funding President and CEO Mark Little. “We’re bringing the community back to commercial finance.”

This dynamic relationship also aims to raise the profile of community banking within Atlanta, which was hit hard during the financial crisis of 2008. The years following the crisis saw commercial lending move away from local banks and toward online lenders.