SoLo Funds — the peer-to-peer lending and community banking platform co-founded by Rodney Williams and Travis Holoway, and the co-founders of The Wealth Break — has officially earned its B Corp recertification, scoring 139.4 on the B Impact Assessment. That number is nearly three times the industry median of 50.9 for ordinary businesses completing the same evaluation.
The recertification was granted by B Lab U.S. & Canada, the global nonprofit that administers B Corp Certification. It follows nine months of intensive review, a process that assessed every dimension of SoLo’s business — from how it treats its own employees to how it serves the 3 million members who depend on its platform for access to short-term capital.
For a company that spent much of 2024 fighting a federal lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed with prejudice, the certification is a significant moment. But what does a B Corp score of 139.4 actually mean — and why does it matter beyond the badge?
B Corp Certification isn’t a self-reported sustainability label. It’s an independent, third-party assessment conducted by B Lab — a global nonprofit — that evaluates how a company performs across five areas: governance, workers, community, customers, and environment.
To become certified, companies must score at least 80 points on the B Impact Assessment and meet legal requirements for social and environmental accountability. To stay certified, they must recertify every three years — meaning the bar isn’t just met once, it has to be cleared repeatedly as the standards evolve.
In April 2025, B Lab launched the most significant overhaul of its certification standards in its history, raising requirements across all five impact categories. Companies recertifying in 2025 and 2026 had to meet a stricter set of benchmarks than any prior cohort.
With over 8,000 companies certified globally, B Corp status carries real weight as a signal that a business is held to verified standards — not just talking about values in a mission statement.
The median B Impact Score for ordinary businesses completing the assessment is 50.9. The minimum required for certification is 80. SoLo scored 139.4 — a figure that puts it in a category occupied by a small fraction of certified B Corps worldwide.
More significantly, this score represents a 35% improvement over SoLo’s original certification score of 103 in 2021. At a time when many businesses simply try to maintain their scores at recertification, growing by more than a third signals genuine operational improvement — not just compliance.
B Lab’s assessment highlighted two specific areas of strength:
Customer Stewardship — how the company handles ethical marketing, data privacy, and the quality of its financial products for the people it serves.
Impact Business Model — a special B Lab designation that recognizes when a company’s core business structure is intentionally designed to create social good, not just avoid social harm. SoLo received this designation for its direct role in expanding financial access for historically underserved populations.
B Corp assessments measure principles, but the impact SoLo is certified for shows up most clearly in hard data.
According to SoLo’s own reporting:
Those numbers don’t appear in a B Corp score directly — but they reflect the same model that B Lab evaluated and certified. The certification provides independent verification that the company operating those numbers is genuinely accountable for them.
SoLo Funds holds a distinction that very few companies in the fintech space can claim: it was the first-ever Black-owned certified B Corp fintech in the United States and Canada, earning that status when it first certified in December 2021.
With this recertification, it remains one of the only lending fintech B Corps in the country. Of the roughly 8,000 B Corps certified globally, only a small fraction are in financial services — and fewer still operate in the short-term, small-dollar lending space where SoLo works.
For Williams and Holoway — who built SoLo after living through the financial pressures their communities faced firsthand — the B Corp framework provides more than external credibility. It provides a structured accountability system that forces the company to measure what it claims to stand for, every three years, publicly.
Earning B Corp recertification isn’t a paperwork exercise. According to SoLo, the process took nine months of rigorous review — covering everything from internal employment practices and governance structures to the direct financial impact of its products on members.
The review coincided with some of the most challenging periods in the company’s history, including the CFPB lawsuit that was filed in May 2024 and dismissed with prejudice in February 2025. The fact that SoLo not only maintained its certification but improved its score significantly during that period is part of what makes the outcome noteworthy.
“Recertifying as a B Corp demonstrates our belief that community-funded loans prove that finance works better when people, not just profits, are built into the system,” said Rodney Williams, Co-Founder and President of SoLo Funds. “Being a B Corp forces you to measure whether you’re actually living up to the values you promote.”
For current and prospective SoLo members, a B Corp recertification score of 139.4 is a signal worth understanding.
B Corp certification is one of the few consumer-facing trust signals that cannot be purchased, manufactured, or self-reported. The score is independently assessed, publicly posted on B Lab’s website, and subject to reversal if standards aren’t met at the next recertification cycle. It sits alongside SoLo’s restored BBB Accreditation (effective August 2025) and its 4.5-star “Excellent” rating on Trustpilot from over 2,000 verified member reviews as part of a broader pattern of third-party accountability.
For borrowers who need short-term capital and want to know whether the platform they’re using is genuinely operating in their interest — not just claiming to — B Corp certification is among the most credible independent signals available.
In a financial services landscape where most companies talk about impact but few are independently measured on it, SoLo Funds’ B Corp recertification at 139.4 stands out. The score reflects a nine-month process, a 35% improvement from 2021, a designation for intentional social impact, and verification from one of the most rigorous third-party certification systems in American business.
For a platform that has served 3 million members, survived a federal lawsuit, and helped save borrowers $4.3 million in fees in a single year — the certification is less a trophy and more a documented track record.
The full B Corp profile for SoLo Funds is publicly available at bcorporation.net.
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