Recent News
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced the launch of Project REACh to promote financial inclusion through greater access to credit and capital. REACh stands for Roundtable for Economic Access and Change and brings together leaders from the banking industry, national civil rights organizations, business, and technology to identify and reduce barriers that prevent full, equal, and fair participation in the nation’s economy. Participants in the inaugural meeting included Brian Argrett of City First Bank of DC and Wayne Bradshaw of Broadway Federal Bank.
NCRC has recommended an approach that will make CRA ratings more rigorous. This white paper describes NCRC's suggested rating system and discusses our forecasts of increased dollars for LMI neighborhoods. The paper focused on community development (CD) financing. CD financing targets affordable housing, economic development projects and community facilities in LMI neighborhoods. NCRC suspects that the agencies have been lax in their examination of CD financing.
Consumers can push for racial justice – and it's as simple as opening an account at a community bank or credit union that supports under-served communities. Across the U.S., there are more than 1,000 Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs. These institutions specialize in under-served communities and more than a third of their banks are led by... Read more
Congress provided a lifeline for small businesses in late March: the Paycheck Protection Program, a $349 billion program to facilitate government-backed, forgivable loans intended to keep businesses afloat. Demand was high when the program launched in early April: the allocated funding ran out in less than two weeks and many Community Development Funding Institutions (CDFIs) like Sky-Tucker's felt left out. The more than 1,000 CDFIs across the country provide education, investments, and loans to low-to-moderate income individuals and businesses that usually can't access credit at larger... Read more
Darrin Williams was already out sick for a few days — not Coronavirus-related — when Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Williams, who is Black, has a 21-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter. “Every Black parent has to have that conversation about the police with their kids,” he says. He is also the CEO of Southern Bancorp, a bank with $1.5 billion in assets, serving small cities and rural areas of Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta region. Banks didn’t create systemic racism by themselves, and they won’t solve it by themselves. But banks have played an important role... Read more
Andy Anderson of Anguilla has been elected Chairman of the Mississippi Bankers Association (MBA) for 2020-2021. As MBA Chairman, Anderson chairs the association's Board of Directors and Executive Committee. The membership of the 132-year-old statewide trade association includes commercial banks and savings institutions operating in Mississippi. MBA members hold more than 95 percent of bank deposits in the state. Anderson serves as President, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Bank of Anguilla. He has over 37 years of banking experience, all with Bank of... Read more
Streaming giant Netflix is depositing $100 million of its cash on hand in Black-owned banks. The company says Black-owned financial institutions have a harder time accessing capital and that the move should help the banks lend more to their communities. There are only 21 Black-owned banks in the United States, and they’re predominantly located in communities of color. Michael Neal, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, said they don’t have the deposits that other banks do. At the Black-owned Carver State Bank in Savannah, Georgia, Robert James II said more... Read more
The CARES Act created the extremely successful Paycheck Protection Program which has helped small businesses maintain payroll during these challenging times. The U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury), the Small Business Administration (SBA) and over 5,000 lenders took quick action to launch this program and have provided an unprecedented 4.8 million loans. The deadline to apply for the PPP is June 30, 2020, but an additional $140 billion of PPP funds remain unobligated. To ready our small business, lenders and entrepreneurs for learning how to “live with the virus” and move towards... Read more
Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to produce their second annual look at the Best Banks In Each State to gauge whose customers gave their banks the highest grades. Nearly 25,000 customers in the U.S. were surveyed for their opinions on their current and former banking relationships. Southern Bancorp and BankPlus were named among the best banks in their states.
An effort encouraging investors to buy stock in Black-run banks could create new challenges for the leaders of those companies. The Buying Black movement, which took root last week, led to sharp increases in the shares of companies such as Broadway Financial in Los Angeles, Carver Bancorp in New York and M&F Bancorp in Durham, N.C. An influx of new investors could increase pressure to improve shareholder returns, while any strategic effort designed to generate higher profits could also draw a backlash. At the same time, markets are fickle — most shares in Black-run banks have fallen... Read more
Three years after its successful initial investment, The Cameron Foundation has renewed a $1 million loan and deposit with Virginia Community Capital (VCC), a community development financial institution that makes impact investments throughout the Commonwealth. As the community begins to reopen from the COVID-19 closures, the funds will be deployed into the Tri-Cities and other areas in Cameron's footprint, supporting their economic rebuilding.
In partnership with the 17-member Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) network and lawmakers, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf recently announced the launching of a $225 million statewide grant program that will go to support small businesses throughout the state that have been impacted by the COVID-19 public health crisis and the subsequent business closure order. CDFI is a group of 17 Pennsylvania-based community development financial institutions that primarily provide financing options for small businesses. The fund will be distributed through the recently enacted... Read more
Podcast: Sells, American Banker's Digital Banker of the Year, explains how he encouraged his team to take risks on projects like a three-minute account opening process and a system that analyzes core data in real time to help set deposit prices. Read American Banker's profile on him here.
Foundations and other institutional investors are targeting capital to help hardest-hit communities recover from the coronavirus pandemic, reviving a structure that helped during the Great Recession: community development financial institutions. Unlike traditional banks, CDFIs deploy federal funds that they then leverage four to six times with private debt from banks, foundations, corporations and individuals to lend to disadvantaged business owners, affordable housing developers and community projects that would not otherwise qualify for traditional loans. There are now more... Read more
Lawmakers are sounding the alarm over complaints from minority-owned and other underserved companies that they are unable access to small-business loans mandated by recent pandemic relief laws. Some independent data backs up their concerns, pointing to minority-owned businesses getting rejected or still waiting for coronavirus rescue funds. And, with the nation intensely focused on racial divisions after the killing of George Floyd, members of Congress from both parties continue to demand better demographic data from the government on recipients of Paycheck Protection Program loans. Fears... Read more
From Rep. Mike Quigley, Chair of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee: Last month, the House passed legislation to provide critical funding to help state and local governments, support our front-line workers in the fight against coronavirus and assist small businesses and workers impacted by the pandemic. However, our work is far from over; we will be dealing with the economic fallout for months, if not years to come. That’s why the $1 billion in the HEROES Act for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) is key. This funding will not only provide... Read more
The Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA) stands in solidarity with black communities in calling for an end to systemic racism and police violence. In response to the national events of the last two weeks, we say black lives absolutely do matter. There is no excuse for racism of any kind.
When the Small Business Administration rolled out its Paycheck Protection Program, it set off a fire drill of sorts among bank technology executives, who had to quickly figure out how to accept applications from borrowers and load them into the SBA's system before the money ran out. Like other banks, the $1.4 billion-asset Sunrise Banks in St. Paul, Minn., had two weeks to decide whether to buy or build a solution, set it up, test it and take it live. As of June 5, Sunrise had made $216 million in paycheck protection loans. What follows is a look at how and why the bank made the... Read more
When does a country reach a tipping point—a point when the citizenry concludes that things are simply spinning out of control, and that something different is required? The question arises, obviously, as protests and looting spread across America in the wake of the brutal police killing of a black man—shocking scenes that have come atop a once-in-a-century pandemic and a Depression-like economic slide. In a moment of crisis, it’s hard to tell when such events will simply fade away in a return to the status quo, and when they will produce lasting change in political and social... Read more
Each year LEDC selects a lender that has shown stellar performance in participating in the Louisiana Small Business Loan Guaranty Program. The Bank of the year recipient exemplifies one of the tenants of LEDC's mission by "Cultivating jobs and economic opportunity through small business, innovation and entrepreneurship." This year's recipient, Bank of St. Francisville, provided access to more than $1.5 million in capital to native small businesses through the Louisiana's small business loan guaranty program.