Davenport Entrepreneur Launches TIF Lending Business | Business & Economy

Blaylock is President of Untamed Equity, a new company in the financial industry. While at Northwest Bank & Trust, Blaylock attended the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Her capstone project focused on TIF lending, which sparked the idea of ​​Untamed Equity.

“We started building on that and came up with a whole new idea of ​​building on the need for economic development,” she said.

A TIF, or tax increment, funding increases taxes for a specific geographic area and reinvests the money back into the space. Blaylock said generally the community would pay the developer back when the money came in. Depending on the length of the TIF, this can take years.

Untamed Equity, she said, will analyze TIFs and the money they could generate. The company then loans the money to the developer in a lump sum, which helps companies that can’t provide the equity for the pay-as-you-go format.

“I would say that we are the market leader when it comes to building a whole program around TIF loans,” she said.

Joe Slavins, President of Northwest Bank & Trust, is a minority owner and advisor to Untamed Equity. Developing a new venture in the banking world is not an ordinary feat, he said.

“Innovation in banking is a pretty slow process,” Slavins said.

As a leader in the development of this industry, Blaylock has a lot to offer, Slavins said. In addition, she leads the industry in other ways; Blaylock is the first woman to own a TIF loan business.

Some banks offer TIF loans, but due to their large-scale nature, these banks are few and far between, they said. Blaylock said offering a TIF loan meant the company had to look at the interested community and developer, and also look at the future of the site. Because of all the extra steps, not many banks offer this service.

Slavins said this innovative look at finance is a game changer in the industry.

“This is a new product and a new niche. We’re picking our way through the jungle to make sure this is reproducible for our customers,” he said.