Recent News
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
On behalf of the Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA), we cordially invite you to the 2020 Virtual Peer Forum. CDBA's 2020 Virtual Peer Forum will take place during the afternoons of the first three weeks of December.
We pleased to announce the following Keynote Speakers: Jelena McWilliams, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Brian Brooks, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Jodie Harris, Director, Community... Read more
A half-century ago, the federal government set out to attack the racial wealth gap by supporting Black-owned banks. Policy makers hoped the banks would lend to Black communities sidelined by the mainstream financial system. But five decades of federal financial and regulatory support have failed to boost America's Black-owned banks. The majority have disappeared under the burden of soured loans, bigger competitors created by mergers and financial downturns that hit small lenders hard. Fifteen years ago America had 36 Black-owned banks, government data show. Now there are 18. Now a new... Read more
When COVID-19 hit, Spring Bank responded by supporting their small business and nonprofit partners when they needed it most. Hours after the CARES Act passed in April of this year, their lending team got to work to assist organizations with their applications for a Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan. Spring Bank is proud to report that as of this month, they secured 360 PPP loans–valued at $86.8 million–for small businesses and nonprofits in the New York City area. With these funds, organizations retained over 5,000 jobs.
The Federal Reserve is lowering the minimum loan size for its middle-market business rescue program by more than half to make the program more available to smaller businesses. The central bank said Friday that small businesses seeking credit from the Main Street Lending Program can access loans as small as $100,000, down from the previous cutoff of $250,000, and that fees will be adjusted accordingly. The $600 billion program, which is funded by the Fed and the Treasury Department through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, is available to businesses with fewer than 15,... Read more
Adecade ago, in the last economic crisis, mainstream banks abandoned Dianna Bowser and the Southside Community Development and Housing Corporation, where she's executive director. Founded in 1988, the nonprofit builds homes and provides counseling for first-time homeowners in and around Richmond, Virginia. ut that’s when Bowser first encountered Virginia Community Capital, a relatively new bank at the time. The bank stepped in to finance a major construction project for her organization. It has an unusual nonprofit ownership structure, a mission to serve underserved or disinvested... Read more
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. ... Read more
The Solar Lending Professional Training - Virtual Series is designed for community-based lending practitioners who are interested in expanding their knowledge of the fundamentals of solar finance and increasing their organization's activity in individual consumer and/or community commercial-level financing. These trainings will cover the knowledge, skills and practices you need to engage in solar lending, including market assessment, product development, working with solar installers and developers, underwriting and deal structuring, and program and asset management. We will include... Read more
This year has certainly tested bank executives' ability to manage during a crisis. Apart from dealing with the myriad of business challenges thrown at them by the coronavirus pandemic, they are trying to maintain morale of employees, many of whom are working remotely and coping with stresses of their own. This year American Banker asked executives at the 85 institutions that make up our ranking of the Best Banks to Work For to reveal how they have kept employees engaged and motivated in this most difficult of years. Included on this list are FNBC Bank, BankPlus, and United Bank. ... Read more