NEWS: Coronavirus Response Toolkit

ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION

March 17, 2020

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Coronavirus Response Toolkit

The U.S. Chamber has compiled CDC's coronavirus recommendations for businesses and workers across the country. We continue to encourage American businesses to follow data-based guidance from the CDC and state and local officials. Below, you'll find a sharable graphics based on the CDC's latest guidance for businesses and employees. We encourage you to share these assets on social media, websites, and other channels, and send them to your colleagues and employees.

Key Messages and Example Posts

Here's what you can do to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 at home, work, or school.
We all have a part to play in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Make sure you are regularly practicing these healthy habits.
If you think you are getting sick with COVID-19, follow this step-by-step guide to prevent spreading the virus to others.
All employers should be prepared to address the impacts of the coronavirus, including planning for unexpected closures in your area and exploring telework options.

Read more at U.S. Chamber of Commerce

For more than a decade, REPAY has put our clients first. We've spent years innovating the best financial technology and payment processing solutions to make their lives easier, and we've done a pretty great job. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, we not only process for more than 10,000 merchant locations, but we've spread all across our great nation-from Chicago to Phoenix and more.

Small Business Administration Disaster Assistance in Response to the Coronavirus

(COVID-19)

The U.S. Small Business Administration is offering designated states and territories low-interest federal disaster loans for working capital to small businesses suffering substantial economic injury as a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Upon a request received from a state's or territory's Governor, SBA will issue under its own authority, as provided by the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act that was recently signed by the President, an Economic Injury Disaster Loan declaration.

Any such Economic Injury Disaster Loan assistance declaration issued by the SBA makes loans available to small businesses and private, non-profit organizations in designated areas of a state or territory to help alleviate economic injury caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance will coordinate with the state's or territory's Governor to submit the request for Economic Injury Disaster Loan assistance.

Once a declaration is made for designated areas within a state, the information on the application process for Economic Injury Disaster Loan assistance will be made available to all affected communities as well as updated on our website: SBA.gov/disaster.

U.S. Small Business Administration

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: CDC - Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Situation Summary

This is an emerging, rapidly evolving situation and CDC will provide updated information as it becomes available, in addition to updated guidance.

CDC is responding to an outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel (new) coronavirus that was first detected in China and which has now been detected in more than 100 locations internationally, including in the United States. The virus has been named "SARS-CoV-2" and the disease it causes has been named "coronavirus disease 2019" (abbreviated "COVID-19").

On January 30, 2020, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a "public health emergency of international concernexternal icon" (PHEIC). On January 31, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II declared a public health emergency (PHE) for the United States to aid the nation's healthcare community in responding to COVID-19. On March 11, WHO publiclyexternal icon characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic. On March 13, the President of the United States declared the COVID-19 outbreak a national emergencyexternal icon.
Read more at CDC

Lead Your Business Through the Coronavirus Crisis

The Covid-19 crisis has now reached a new critical phase where public health systems need to act decisively to contain the growth in new epicenters outside China.

Clearly, the main emphasis is and should be on containing and mitigating the disease itself. But the economic impacts are also significant, and many companies are feeling their way towards understanding, reacting to, and learning lessons from rapidly unfolding events. Unanticipated twists and turns will be revealed with each news cycle, and we will only have a complete picture in retrospect.

Nevertheless, given the very different degrees of preparedness across companies, the further potential for disruption, and the value of being better prepared for future crises, it's worth trying to extract what we have learned so far. Based on our ongoing analysis and support for our clients around the world, we have distilled the following 12 lessons for responding to unfolding events, communicating, and extracting and applying learnings.

1) Update intelligence on a daily basis.
Read more at Harvard Business Review

Why is Email the Key to Preventing Fraud? by Lizzie Hoffman, with Timothy Li

Preventing fraud within your business can be simplified with the right tools, and at TowerData, fraud prevention is one of the many reasons clients use our Email Activity Metric fields.

To dive into this topic a bit deeper, we spoke with Timothy Li, a FinTech expert and the CEO at Alchemy, and explored how to use email as an early fraud prevention tool, some of the common email red flags, and why Email Activity Metrics along with first party data can be a powerful combination.

How does Email Activity Metrics work?

Email Activity Metrics, at its core, scores email addresses based on four key metrics:
Date first seen: The date TowerData first encountered the email address
Longevity: A score indicating when TowerData first encountered the email address
Velocity: A score describing the level of activity of the email address over the past 6 months

Read more at TowerData Inc.

5 Resources to Help Your Small Business Survive the Coronavirus

The coronavirus is causing financial difficulties for businesses across the U.S. Here are five resources that can help you navigate this difficult situation.

The coronavirus outbreak has global health consequences, and it puts many small businesses at economic risk. If your business is struggling financially due to the coronavirus, here are some resources that can help.

The coronavirus response toolkit
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce put together this toolkit to help businesses and citizens alike understand how to navigate the coronavirus. There are guidelines on how small business owners can ensure they are keeping their customers and employees safe.

The toolkit also includes a business preparedness checklist. This checklist can help you figure out what to prioritize and to create a plan of communication for your employees.

Disaster assistance loans from the SBA
Read more at U.S. Chamber of Commerce

What Are Companies' Legal Obligations Around Coronavirus?

With the rapid global spread of coronavirus, companies should focus first and foremost on employee safety. And as they're reviewing their strategies, policies, and procedures, many leaders are specifically wondering about their legal risk. Not having adequate communicable-illness policies and response plans could expose them to a laundry list of HR-related legal concerns.

Most countries have laws designed to protect employees from physical harm at work. In the United States, employees are protected under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, so if an employee becomes infected at work, in some circumstances the employer may face penalties. Unprepared employers may be exposed to lawsuits related to workers' compensation, invasion of privacy, discrimination, unfair labor practice, and negligence.

The good news is that with careful attention to employee safety and legal preparedness, employers can minimize employees' risk of infection and their own legal risks. Following are eight steps companies should take to these ends. The value of these efforts, of course, is relevant to any life-threatening infectious disease, not just coronavirus.
Read more at Harvard Business Review

Why Credit Unions Should License Payment Technology. by Kristen Hoyman

Does your credit union use technology to make things easier for members?
Mambu, Salesforce, Microsoft Office 360, Google G Suite, and Leasewave

What do these software companies have in common? Two things:

Banks and credit unions commonly use them
The software is licensed, not purchased

These software companies are doing everything from providing email services to managing customer data and lease transactions to serving as core banking systems. And they do it all in the cloud through software licensing, commonly referred to as SaaS or software as a service.

Banks and credit unions have been moving towards the cloud from on-premise software more slowly than other industries. This Credit Union 2.0 tech trends article, however, places cloud as one of the seven areas expected to grow in the future. The other six areas are:
Read more at REPAY

Coronavirus: 8 Things Your Small Business Needs to Do

Here are the top CDC-recommended tips that small business owners can take to mitigate risk, protect employees and support customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading rapidly, with new updates flying in every minute. As the situation evolves, many small business owners are unsure of what steps to take to mitigate risk, protect employees and support customers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce offers a coronavirus toolkit with a compilation of the CDC's recommendations for businesses and workers across the country. Here are the key points and immediate steps the CDC recommends.

Establish a remote work option
With plenty of people already working remotely, there are a lot of free tools business owners can utilize so that teams can stay in touch and keep working even if they aren't in the same place.
Read more at U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Adopting AI for Credit and Lending Decisions: 4 Common Data Mistakes

Are you interested in adopting AI and machine learning to grow your lending?

If so, the journey to realizing AI and machine learning for your credit and lending decisions essentially begins with data. Handling and preparing a massive amount of data for AI and machine learning can be uncharted territory for many.

If you're looking to partner with a company like Trust Science to use AI and machine learning for your credit decisioning there are some fundamentals to adopt and 'data' mistakes to avoid to help you adopt new tech faster for your. In this blog we cover how to overcome 4 common data mistakes keeping you from adopting AI and machine learning;

Poor categorization of different data types
Not having a data dictionary or data ontology
Lack of time-stamps in the data
Improper use of or within the LOS and/or LMS