What Neighborly Brings to the Muni Market

Neighborly CEO Jase Wilson discusses his company’s platform and its “Neighborly Bonds Challenge” at The Bond Buyer’s recent California Public Finance Conference.

VOICE OVER: Our platform tries to make the most direct relationship between issuer, borrowing community and investor as possible. It starts with an origination process that's online, that is transparent and made very clear and as easy as possible.

We've partnered with Orrick, one of the most respected bond councils, to help standardize some of the documents that go into the offerings, and put investors the ability to subscribe and say, "I'm Keily and I'm interested in anything in the Los Angeles region in the realm of education," and you receive an alert when a new issuance is being published and you have a chance to have a chance on authentic retail periods.

We have really advanced know-your-customer system that allows us to understand in really fine grained detail the nature of our buyers and we do great amounts of diligence beforehand. Then we also work to educate new investors who are-- especially younger folks who are coming to the mini-market and want access to an investment opportunity that gives them the chance to do well financially by doing good somewhere in a community. That's an education process in longer term.

The Neighborly Bonds Challenge was our intro into the market and our chance for issuers to be among the first to experience a new way to finance, starting with their community as the first investors. We launched it nationwide and I had over 43 applications from 43 different cities, including over $100 billion worth of projects proposed, ranging from affordable housing to energy, to education, and transportation, and everything in between. The winners who we'll announced tomorrow at the Bombay Conference, we're working with on an individual basis to figure out all of the details of each of the projects and to get everything prepared. The projects will take place over the course of the next year.