Community Development Banking News
CDFI Banking: Industry, Policy, and Beyond.
Community bankers are sensing a chance to poach clients from Wells Fargo as the financial giant struggles with a phony-account scandal.
The Financial CHOICE Act would change the CFPB’s structure and regulatory power, and would help community financial institutions by ending Operation Choke Point.
Durham-based M&F Bank has made the decision to de-list from the Nasdaq and withdraw its common stock from registration. In a securities filing Tuesday, the company said the decision came down to several factors, including the “significant cost” of filing periodic reports and complying with regulatory rules. According to the disclosure, the company will continue to publish “selected financial information” and quarterly earnings reports on its website.
Banks, weighing factors that include cost-efficient underwriting, keeping credit losses under control, and regulators' caution on products such as deposit advance, struggle to create workable credit products that meet the short-term borrowing needs of low- and moderate-income customers. This prevents those customers from climbing the traditional bank credit ladder, and drives them to seek other options. Consequently, the landscape is saturated with more than 50,000 alternative financial services storefronts and websites that include check cashers, auto title lenders, pawnshops and the like. These alternative lenders are often labeled "fringe," but one in four households use them regularly.
Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow coined the term, conscious uncoupling. Nichol Beckstrand, President of Sunrise Banks, talks in terms of conscious coupling and poses a challenge for fin tech and financial institutions. Join Nichol as she kicks off PayThink 2016 and challenges the audience with real life examples of how Sunrise Banks has taken innovation and driven this mission focused bank from Minneapolis/St. Paul into a national limelight.
PayThink is focused on the important inter-connected markets of debit, prepaid, mobile, digital payments and ATM. Every year, innovative leaders from across the industry come together to share best practices and identify profitable growth strategies.
Southern Bancorp CEO, Darrin Williams, was recently presented the Supporting Organization of the Year award on behalf of Southern Bancorp for the community development bank’s efforts to support minority business growth from the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce during Minority Enterprise Development Week.
The rallying cry emerged after a summer that saw the nation, once again, engaged in discussions about race, policing, and inequality. Instead of just taking to the streets after the deaths of black men at the hands of police and the subsequent murder of officers, protesters were urged — through hashtags like #bankblack and #blackdollarsmatter — to deposit $100 each into black-owned banks. And for Boston-based OneUnited Bank, the nation’s largest black-owned bank, the impact of the “Bank Black” movement was almost immediate. The bank, which has struggled in recent years, added more than $10 million in deposits in less than a month, said Teri Williams, the bank’s president.
Banking in St. Paul is easy. Or at least when compared to Los Angeles, where David Reiling worked for First Interstate Bank fresh out of college. “The first two weeks I was there, the bank I was in got robbed three times,” Reiling said. That didn’t deter him, though. Reiling has made a career out of working in inner-city banks, finding his stride in developing communities through financial services. He’s been with St. Paul-based Sunrise Banks, which aims to bring financial empowerment to underserved populations, for 20 years. For the past 12 years he’s been CEO.
Learn about the 20 year old program in California called the California Organized Investment Network, or COIN. Through its various programs, COIN encourages and tracks insurance company reinvestment into low- and moderate-income areas of California.
Despite celebrating its 20th anniversary in August, COIN has never been permanent. Every few years, the state legislature has to reauthorize it, and the latest COIN reauthorization bill, passed last month, leaves out or severely limits key provisions of the program. Advocates will have to re-start the battle next year in order to restore COIN to its current capacity.
The number of community development banks is rising at a time when the ranks of other financial institutions are shrinking. The special-purpose banks — a subset of community development financial institutions — serve low- and moderate-income communities. By becoming CDFIs, banks — along with credit unions and other types of lenders — can apply for certain funding from the Treasury Department and other agencies.
First Southwest Bank and Bank of Anguilla discuss the reasons why they became CDFI certified banks and Jeannine Jacokes of the Community Development Bankers Association talks about the benefits of CDFI certification for the community banking industry.