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Phil Goldfeder

Executive

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Cross River Bank's senior vice president of global public affairs through the PPP years, and its public voice when the SBA said it would investigate the bank in December 2022; CEO of the American Fintech Council since March 2023. He has not been charged with anything.

In the archive

Identity and role

Phil Goldfeder spent five years as senior vice president of global public affairs at Fort Lee, New Jersey-based Cross River Bank. In March 2023 he became CEO of the American Fintech Council (AFC), a fintech trade group (Banking Dive, Feb. 22, 2023). Before Cross River he was a member of the New York State Assembly and a senior adviser to Senator Chuck Schumer and to Mayor Michael Bloomberg (LegiStorm; Banking Dive).

What the bank did in PPP

Cross River originated 478,866 PPP loans worth $12.89 billion across 2020 and 2021, most of them through fintech partners including BlueVine and Kabbage (SBA PPP loan-level data; see the Cross River profile). Banking Dive, citing SBA figures at the time, called it the sixth-largest PPP lender with 288,932 loans worth nearly $6.6 billion; that count predates the full 2021 round.

Goldfeder explained the volume in 2020: "Cross River merges the expertise of a bank with innovative offerings of a technology company every single day, and PPP was just an extension of that" (Banking Dive, Company of the Year, Dec. 2020).

December 2022: the investigation

On May 27, 2021 House Select Subcommittee chairman James Clyburn sent Cross River CEO Gilles Gade a document demand in the fintech-PPP inquiry (Clyburn letter, May 27, 2021). The subcommittee's report followed on December 1, 2022, and on December 8 the SBA suspended Womply and Blueacorn and said it would investigate eight lenders, Cross River among them (Banking Dive, Dec. 9, 2022).

Goldfeder told American Banker he was surprised by the investigation and that the report "actually lauded the work of responsible banks like Cross River." He added: "Cross River answered the call of Congress to help the smallest businesses survive the pandemic, and now we count on the SBA to do the right thing and differentiate between those who truly helped during the pandemic and those who didn't do enough to deter and identify fraud" (as quoted by Banking Dive). No public resolution of the SBA investigation has surfaced (Cross River profile).

Three months later, on March 8, 2023, Cross River entered an FDIC consent order (FDIC-22-0040b) over fair-lending compliance; it does not concern PPP (consent order). Goldfeder has faced no personal enforcement action, and no PPP or EIDL loan, SVOG grant or other relief payment to him is identified in these sources.

Since 2025

Goldfeder remains CEO of the American Fintech Council (AFC). When he took the job, Banking Dive noted that the SBA was weighing whether to open its 7(a) program to more nonbank lenders. In March 2025 the AFC wrote to the Senate Small Business Committee urging confirmation of Bill Briggs as SBA deputy administrator, citing his role running "daily operations" of PPP (AFC letter, Mar. 12, 2025; see William Briggs). The letter was signed by the AFC's head of policy, not by Goldfeder.

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Original source documents and archived copies

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