Cross River Bank

ART I CLE T I TLE “When we started in 2008, there was no grand plan for technological innovation,” Goldfeder admits. “We opened up simply to serve the local community, offering the traditional services you’d expect from a community bank. But most people who had been customers with the biggest banks suddenly found that their calls weren’t getting returned after the recession. We recognized this gap in the market.” Cross River’s first foray into the technology space didn’t actually take place until 2010 when the bank was approached by a company called GreenSky. “GreenSky is a technology firm that had a contract with Home Depot to deploy loans,” says Goldfeder. “GreenSky had the technology but they were looking for a bank that could help them originate the loans. So Cross River worked tirelessly to build a regulatory structure that enabled a community bank in New Jersey to help originate loans at Home Depots all across the country, working in partnership with GreenSky.” Cross River’s collaboration with GreenSky was the start of an entirely new approach to banking. Now Cross River was not only focused on making credit available to its local community; it was also evaluating the challenges of partnering with a technology company, identifying how it would continue to protect its consumers and ensure regulatory compliance. The GreenSky partnership may have been the beginning but, since then, Cross River has slowly yet surely expanded its partnerships and today has a few dozen online lending services. However, the bank’s partnerships go beyond online lending to cover a range of innovations. Goldfeder acknowledges, “As new technology companies offer additional services, Cross River evolves to meet the needs of those services. A good example of this is a point of sale lender that we were originating loans for. One day,