A bilingual credit union is opening in Philly, seeking ‘unbanked’ customers to buy homes, build family businesses

At a former restaurant in a drive-up shopping strip on the edge of Port Richmond, a bilingual credit union has joined the neighborhood.

The new branch of Finanta credit union, a federally chartered credit union, which also calls itself Cooperativa Finanta, “is not just a banking place,” says Pedro A. Rivera II, Finanta’s board chair, president of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster, and a graduate of Kensington High School.

“We are focused on people that are unbanked: small-business owners and workers who go to check-cashing agencies and use money orders and sometimes predatory [high-rate private] lenders,” said Daniel Betancourt, the credit union’s president and CEO.

Finanta offers mortgages, personal and small business loans, Visa debit cards, and interest on deposits. And credit union staff help customers learn to use these products — in English and Spanish.

Branch manager Iris Santiago signed off on one of its first home mortgages to cleaning-service co-owner Libra Rivera, on Wednesday. The credit union office at 2313 E. Venango St. officially opens Friday but began accepting deposits and booking loans earlier.

Rivera said the concept takes him back to his North Philly youth, when he banked both the funds of the Amigos de Roberto Clemente youth track and field association and his newly minted teacher’s pay at the former Borinquen Federal Credit Union at Front and Allegheny, which shut in 2011.

“It was the size of a rowhouse. You’d go in and connect to the tellers in a space where you could catch up what was going through the community and ask questions about percent yield, about how to leverage dollars in a place that was trusted,” Rivera said.

He got that same feeling when he visited Finanta’s pilot branch in Lancaster after it opened in 2023. Rivera agreed to serve as Finanta’s chairman and went to work lining up support to speed its growth.

Now, bolstered by private foundations and a state investment, Finanta is opening what it expects to be its largest branch in Port Richmond, with others to follow in Reading, Northeast Philly, Allentown, and other communities with large English-and-Spanish-speaking populations.

The Lancaster branch signed up 2,000 members in three years. Betancourt expects as many in Philadelphia by next fall.

This growth is not yet organic. Mackenzie Scott’s Yield Giving foundation in 2023 pledged $2 million a year for seven years to help finance loans. Santander Bank and M&T Bank invested funds as part of their community-banking mandates. State House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jordan Harris, at the recommendation of Rep. Jose Giral and Sen. Tina Tartaglione, all Philadelphia Democrats, granted $4 million to build the Reading and Port Richmond branches.

The credit union made its first mortgage this summer and offers home loans up to $400,000, enough to purchase homes in many but not all Philadelphia neighborhoods.

The credit union also has made business loans to local firms like Puerto Rican bakery and restaurant El Coqui in Kensington. El Coqui had previously borrowed from the Finanta loan fund, which Betancourt also leads. Founded in 1996, the fund later merged with the larger Community First Fund of Lancaster and now lends in several cities under the Finanta name. The fund’s Philadelphia clients include developers such as HACE, projects such as Charles Lomax’s Village Square on Haverford in West Philly, and family-owned stores such as Silvia’s Bakery and Mucho Perú.

A new credit union, open to everyone but anchored in the Latino communities, “is very much needed,” said Pedro Rodriguez, cofounder of Café Don Pedro coffee roasters in Brewerytown.

He’s worried about loan volume amid the Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport immigrants. “They have people scared of their shadow,” he added.

But others call the credit union a lifeline for people under pressure.

“Our immigrants are very brave. A lot of the people who come to us are pursuing mortgages, pursuing small-business loans, they say what’s going on is not unusual for them, and they are persisting” in building lives here, said Will Gonzalez, head of Ceiba, a Philadelphia-based economic-development advocacy coalition.

Gonzalez has noted a drop this year — from almost one a day to less than two a month — in noncitizens filing for the first time to pay their income taxes with help from his agency, but those who have already been assigned IRS numbers have returned to file again even if their own immigration status is unresolved.

“People are paying taxes because it’s the right thing to do,” Gonzalez added. “And because they want to borrow to put their kids in college and to buy a house. To do that, they know they need to show the lenders they have paid their taxes.” It’s a sign they see their long-term future in Philadelphia.

He said the former Borinquen credit union was badly needed but underfunded — “a little tree in a desert.” It operated from 1974 to 2011 until it was taken over by regulators and closed after suffering losses. A manager was sentenced to 7½ years in federal prison for stealing from the institution and members from 2006 to 2009.

The Finanta credit union board Rivera heads, which oversees Betancourt and his growing staff, includes Mennonite Church USA moderator Elizabeth Soto Albrecht, Amalgamated Bank first vice president and 2016 Democratic National Convention CFO Jason O’Malley, and other professionals based in cities with large bilingual populations.

For all his experience overseeing institutional budgets, Rivera said he and the other directors have had to learn banking in accordance with National Credit Union Administration guidelines.

“I take my fiduciary responsibility seriously. We are now facing the regulatory expectations and demands of the banking world,” he said. “We know what is expected of us.”

Gonzalez said Finanta’s focus on Pennsylvania cities with large and growing Latino populations makes it a natural support network.

”They are helping these communities build political and economic power," he said. “They are in the right place at the right time.”