Recent News
When people come to live in the U.S. from other countries, they often don't have an American credit history, identification or other typical requirements of the account-opening or loan process. But community banks are finding ways to serve this growing population while mitigating credit and compliance hurdles. Spring Bank and Sunrise Banks are featured in this article.
After four decades in the banking industry, Jane Henderson plans to retire this year as President and CEO of Virginia Community Capital (VCC). As the organization's founding executive director, Henderson has led VCC since its inception in 2006. Her banking career includes 29 years spent in community development finance. VCC, a community development financial institution (CDFI), was born out of a $15 million investment and a vision for an institution that served Virginia's most under-resourced communities.
Southern Bancorp, Inc., a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and holding company for Southern Bancorp Bank, today announced it has entered into a merger agreement to acquire DeWitt First Bankshares Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary, Arkansas County Bank, a $185 million asset bank with two branches in Arkansas County (DeWitt and Stuttgart) and one in Sevier County (Lockesburg).
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Rohit Chopra to be the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to four sources familiar with the decision, choosing a strong consumer advocate aligned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). If confirmed, Chopra, now a member of the Federal Trade Commission, would be returning to helm an agency he helped Warren set up after its establishment by the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010. The selection of Chopra signals that the Biden administration plans to return the CFPB to the more-muscular posture of its early... Read more
Duke Energy announced today it has deposited $5 million into Optus Bank, a Black-owned bank based in South Carolina, furthering the company's support for diverse and minority-owned businesses, individuals and low income communities. The transaction was completed at the end of 2020. This marks the largest deposit Duke Energy has made with a Black-owned bank in the U.S. and the company expects to evaluate additional similar opportunities in the future. And, this historic relationship expands Optus Bank's depositors to include the utility sector.
FHLBank Atlanta board members elected Brian E. Argrett, president, chief executive officer, and director of City First Bank of DC, to a two-year term as vice chair of FHLBank Atlanta's board of directors. Mr. Argrett was founder and managing partner of both Fulcrum Capital Group and Fulcrum Capital Partners, L.P. from 1992 to 2011. He served as president, chief executive officer, and director of Fulcrum Venture Capital Corporation, a federally licensed and regulated Small Business Investment Company, from 1992 to 2011. He currently serves as chairman of the boards of directors of City... Read more
The Bureau is actively seeking applications for vacancies on the Consumer Advisory Board (CAB), the Community Bank Advisory Council (CBAC), the Credit Union Advisory Council (CUAC), and the Academic Research Council (ARC). The deadline for application closes on February 24, 2021, at 11:59PM EST. Our intention is to complete this Director-level appointment process by September 2021. There are 18 vacancies across the various committees. Advisory committee members serve two year terms, on a staggered cadence. Please click the link for application instructions.
Congress has made the Paycheck Protection Program more flexible and given priority to the smallest, hardest-hit businesses, but the long-awaited second round of loans will still serve as little more than a stopgap as the pandemic rages on. The lending program reopened to some lenders Monday, about three weeks after Congress passed the bill. During the first few days, only community financial institutions, which mostly work with very small and often minority-owned businesses, will be able to make loans. "It's not a silver bullet for smaller businesses. But they hopefully can get a bunch of... Read more
The Paycheck Protection Program's soft launch received mixed reviews, creating uncertainty over when the portal will be open to all participating lenders. The Small Business Administration limited access on Monday to community development financial institutions, minority depository institutions and other mission-driven lenders, representing about a tenth of all the companies participating in the emergency loan program. “It’s a challenging situation for us,” said Robert James II, director of strategic initiatives at the $48.4 million-asset Carver Financial, a Black-owned bank in... Read more
The veteran Chicago banker and VP of Mission Deposits and Community Relationships at Providence Bank & Trust talks about the higher purpose he sees in banking. Milsap says that his goal is to build relationships between his bank and the community they serve by making clear our bank’s focus on community lending and stewardship.
The recently passed coronavirus relief package will include $9 billion to the newly restored Emergency Capital Investment Fund. The $9 billion Emergency Capital Investment Fund isn't supposed to be a bailout for eligible banks and credit unions. It's intended to position the eligible lenders to make new loans as the economy recovers over the next few years — particularly small businesses loans. “It’s a gargantuan amount of money,” says Jeannine Jacokes, chief executive at the Community Development Bankers Association. “It’s either going to be absolutely game changing or it’s going to... Read more
City First Bank of D.C. and CEO Brian Argrett entered 2021 with lofty goals. The $394 million-asset bank is in the homestretch of completing a merger with Broadway Financial in Los Angeles that would create the nation’s biggest Black-led bank. The deal, scheduled to close in the first half of this year, comes at a time when more banks are focusing on addressing racial inequality. Argrett is one of American Banker’s five... Read more
Several consumer advocacy groups are opposing Oportun Financial's application for a national bank charter, citing concerns about the company's lending and debt-collection practices. Many of those issues came to light in a ProPublica investigation over the summer that focused on the high proportion of collection suits that the online lender had filed in recent years and its high proportion of repeat borrowers. Oportun charges high interest rates, rolls over too much debt and has been too quick to take borrowers to court when they fall behind on payments, the community groups wrote in... Read more
The President is expected to sign the $900 billion COVID relief bill passed by Congress yesterday. Find here a 29 page summary on the most relevant aspects of the stimulus package.
The stimulus package being negotiated in Washington includes $285 billion for a renewed Paycheck Protection Program. The bill includes other aid measures that are not specifically part of the Paycheck Protection Program but could nonetheless help many small businesses. This includes $12 billion for Community Development Financial Institutions, which make loans and grants to people and communities that are often unable to get traditional banks to do business with them. That amount of money would be transformational, said Jeannine Jacokes, the chief executive of the Community... Read more
Yelp Inc., the company that connects people with great local businesses, today announced it has deposited $10 million of its cash reserves with minority-owned financial institutions that support Black and underserved communities, including Broadway Federal Bank (Broadway), Carver Federal Savings Bank (Carver) and Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company (Citizens Savings Bank). According to The Wall Street Journal, fifteen years ago America had 36 Black-owned banks,2 and today the FDIC reports only 20.3 Yelp selected... Read more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) released a panel report as part of its rulemaking process under Dodd-Frank Act Section 1071 governing the collection and reporting of small business lending data. A panel was convened pursuant to the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, comprised of representatives of the Bureau, the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget. The panel consulted with representatives of small entities likely to be affected directly by a Section 1071 regulation, referred to as small entity... Read more
Even as Covid-19 cases surge world-wide, the arrival of viable vaccines holds the promise of a return to something resembling normality by the middle of next year. But the commercial real-estate sector may never get back to normal, and that could spell trouble for banks. Many banks are concentrated in and dependent on commercial property lending. Bankshold half of all commercial real-estate loans. The 5,000 or so U.S. community banks, withabout a third of total assets, are two to three times as concentrated in commercial real-estate lending as the approximately 30 larger banks. Problems in... Read more
A group of Black-owned banks will refinance a major construction loan for the Atlanta Hawks professional basketball team in a deal that organizers hope will spur more investment in Black-owned banks. Led by Carver State Bank in Savannah, Ga., the group of 11 banks will provide a $35 million syndicated loan to the Hawks for the refinancing of the Emory Sports Medicine Complex, the Hawks' three-year-old, 90,000-square-foot training and practice facility that also houses Emory Healthcare's sports medicine program and sports science and research division.
Darrin Williams, a former lawyer, rose from relative obscurity when he was tapped to be a member of President Trump's Great American Economic Revival initiative, which also included Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and David Solomon, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Their conversations with Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin ultimately led the Small Business Administration, which administered the $350 billion program, to earmark the money for so-called CDFIs. Southern Bancorp is one of the largest of about 1,100 such... Read more