CONTACT
Christopher Gil
Director of Strategic Communications and Influence
(415) 287-3197, cgil@liifund.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LIIF Maintains Strong S&P and Aeris Ratings for Fiscal Year 2023
Nationally renowned, 40-year-old CDFI’s stellar ratings highlight continued fiscal soundness
SAN FRANCISCO (Sept. 13, 2024) — The Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) has announced that both S&P and Aeris have once again highly rated the organization’s financial strength. The strong ratings affirm LIIF’s business acumen and strategies that for 40 years have been driving measurable impact in historically excluded communities, assuring capital partners that the organization is ideal for their investment. To date, LIIF has invested $3.5 billion dollars and served 2.5 million people across the nation.
S&P affirmed LIIF’s “A/Stable” rating for fiscal year 2023 (FY23), which ended June 30, 2023. S&P opined that “LIIF has demonstrated stable balance-sheet strength, allowing it to sustain operations through somewhat volatile markets. We believe LIIF’s strategic initiatives have and will continue to lead to stabilized financial ratios and will position the organization to maintain its credit quality even during a downturn.”
Additionally, LIIF maintained the highest rating from Aeris, the only third-party analyst of community development financial institutions (CDFIs). This rating continues a trend of the past two decades, signifying LIIF remains a fiscally sound CDFI best positioned to weather any vicissitudes in the nation’s overall economic and financial markets.
The exemplary Aeris rating for LIIF falls into three buckets, as described by that independent rating service for both financial and impact investments:
- Impact Management Performance – Four Stars. “The CDFI has exceptional alignment of its impact mission, strategies, activities and data that guide its lending, programs and planning. It fully and effectively uses its resources, both directly and indirectly, in pursuit of its impact mission. Its processes and systems accurately track comprehensive data on an ongoing basis, including both output and longer-term outcome metrics, and it can provide data showing positive changes in achieving its impact goals. Board and management consistently use the data to adjust strategies and activities to improve its effectiveness.”
- Policy Plus. “The CDFI leads initiatives to change government policy to benefit the community development finance industry or disadvantaged people and communities. The CDFI can provide evidence of its leadership role in recent policy changes that produced benefits beyond additional resources for the CDFI itself, and management can clearly articulate the CDFI’s leadership role in current policy activities.”
- Financial Strength and Performance — AAA. “The CDFI has exceptional financial strength, performance and risk management practices. Any weaknesses are minor and can be handled in a routine manner by the board of directors and management. The CDFI is resilient to significant changes in its operating environment.”
“We are proud of the latest S&P and Aeris ratings for LIIF, with both showcasing high rankings for financial strength,” said Daniel A. Nissenbaum, Chief Executive Officer at LIIF. “Given the difficult operating environment during the FY23 rating period, including post-pandemic factors, we are enormously proud of our team and our work — and our impact. Nobody, LIIF included, has been immune to the unique economic and social challenges of the past few years; however, LIIF has been able to leverage our organizational strength to stay financially resilient and continue to push toward deep mission impact.”
“In FY23, LIIF continued to raise new capital without issue, structured new offerings, deployed the capital at a strong pace and achieved a high watermark for production, provided the flexibility and patient capital that our clients needed, and built a new operating and advisory business to serve child care operators,” said Panagiota Mahendru, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at LIIF. “We did all that while continuing to invest in our already robust Enterprise Risk Management program.”
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About the Low Income Investment Fund
Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) is a national community development financial institution (CDFI), headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York City, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., that invests in communities of opportunity, equity and well-being. As a CDFI, LIIF supports projects that have high social value but lack access to traditional financial institutions. Since 1984, LIIF has deployed more than $3.5 billion to serve 2.5 million people in communities across the country from its five offices. An S&P-rated organization, LIIF funds healthy communities by providing innovative capital solutions.
liifund.org
We are proud of the latest S&P and Aeris ratings for LIIF, with both showcasing high rankings for financial strength.
LIIF Chief Executive Officer Daniel A. Nissenbaum