News
Local community and economic development depends on a combination of public and private funding, however it can be difficult to ascertain the net impact that private dollars are truly having. To address this, the Federal Reserve of Atlanta's Community & Economic Development department created a new tool, Following the Money, which analyzes foundation giving in localities across the country. This article includes a podcast produced by the Atlanta Fed and written transcript of the interview.
Nichol Beckstrand, President of Sunrise Banks & Holding Company was recently named one of the Smartest People in Payments by PayBefore Magazine. Read more to learn about how embracing innovation and having a tolerance for failure has led to her and the bank's continuing success.
Michael Burris' forward-thinking mentality and focus on strong management, earned him the accolade of Small Bank CFO of the Year Finalist in the Arkansas Business of the Year Awards. Burris' successes include guiding FNBC Bank out of the recession and into their largest asset size yet - just north of $400 million.
The FDIC recently released its National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, the only major nationwide survey of financial inclusion and measures of the behaviors and attitudes of households likely to be excluded from the mainstream financial system. The biggest revelation was that unbanked households nationwide decreased from 7.7% in 2013 to 7.0% in 2015, which represents .5 million to 1 million new net households that have opened accounts in the past two years.
Since the most recent housing crisis, many loan modification programs were developed to protect financially struggling households from foreclosure. Based on several unique loan-level data sets, a newly released Federal Reserve study reports novel empirical evidence on how homeowners manage their credit before and after receiving modifications. This study demonstrates that interventions designed to improve household balance sheets could have a direct and sizable impact on borrower financial outcomes.
The First, A National Banking Association, has announced a merger with Gulf Coast Community Bank which will allow the banks to serve customers with 48 convenient locations in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida. The combined company will have approximately $1.6 billion in total assets, $1.4 billion in total deposits, and $1.1 billion in total loans.
After rigorous evaluation, Albina Community Bank joins ten other Certified B Corporation banks worldwide, which demonstrates their longstanding commitment to making an impact in the Portland, Oregon community. CDBA Members now make up 50% of all Certified B Corp. Banks with members Spring Bank, Beneficial State Bank, Sunrise Banks, and Virginia Community Capital already having secured their certification.
CDBA Members are consistently on the cutting edge of new technology and opportunities to maximize and publicize the social impact they are having in local communities across the country. Naturally therefore it is fitting that City First Bank & Southern Bancorp are the two first institutional members to join Mighty, a new platform that will help "small but powerful" banks connect with potential depositors or investors who might be swayed to pick a bank based on positive social impact.
Although Google announced in May that it would ban all payday loan advertisements through its AdWords service, months after the policy was implemented brokers that connect borrowers to payday lenders still buy Google ads. They appear to have easily sidestepped the company's rules, leaving consumers still vulnerable to high-cost debt traps that can ruin their financial lives.
Kat Taylor, CEO of Beneficial State Bank, makes an impassioned case for an overhaul of banking sector regulations to ensure that the industry aligns with the values of corporate social responsibility in this opinion piece in the San Francisco Business Times.