Central Bank of Kansas City
Central Bank of Kansas City is a community bank with a long and successful history of business lending and outreach, based on its strategy of revitalizing the urban core and building wealth in low-income neighborhoods. With the main branch in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast neighborhood—where it was founded in 1951—Central Bank attends to the needs of the typically underserved in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The bank has been a continual recipient of the CDFI Bank Enterprise Award for its involvement in the community it serves.
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In its largest award round to date, the U.S. Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund announced Feb. 22 that more than $175.4 million in Capital Magnet Fund awards (CMF) have been distributed during its sixth funding round. The fiscal year (FY) 2020 award round also saw the largest number of award recipients with 48 organizations receiving funds. The 48 awardees were selected from 137 applications, which requested more than $642.2 million in awards this CMF round. Congratulations to CDBA members Beneficial State Bancorp, Inc., Central Bank of Kansas City, City First Enterprises, Inc., United Bank, and Virginia Community Capital, Inc. on their Capital Magnet Fund awards!
Promontory recently rebranded itself with a pithier name: IntraFi Network. The new name is meant to reflect the company's core mission of partnering with banks and to help it grow and move beyond the service for which it's best known: reciprocal deposits. The company built a system that enables depositors — such as municipal departments, public schools and high-net-worth individuals — to hold large sums with their primary institution without losing Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. coverage. IntraFi parcels out balances that exceed the $250,000 FDIC limit to other banks within the network. This service also helps community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions gather the capital they need to lend to underserved communities. Customers keep their relationship with their own bank and don't know that IntraFi is involved. Bill Dana, vice chairman of the $261.5 million-asset Central Bank of Kansas City in Missouri, notes that it’s difficult for CDFIs to attract high-balance depositors. “You’re serving a low- to moderate-income community, so by definition there are not a lot of deposit dollars available in your marketplace.”
Consumers on the prowl for higher rates on their savings or more places to spread out their cash have a few shortcuts. Now there’s a new competitor to these savings account rate finders: the German fintech Deposit Solutions. Through SaveBetter.com, an online portal that marks Deposit Solutions’ first foray into the U.S., consumers can shop offerings from a variety of banks. They can open one or more savings accounts from the available banks, with certificates of deposit expected to be available by the end of the year, but manage them all through a single SaveBetter account. “For Central Bank of Kansas City, it’s another source of deposits," said Trent Sorbe, founder and president of Central Payments. "It’s another interesting way in which a small community bank, a CDFI in Kansas City, can diversify its deposit acquisition strategy, reach markets outside of Kansas City and be competitive with larger providers.