Renamed Bank Still Focused On Building Community
This post was originally produced for Forbes.
One PacificCoast Bank is rebranding itself to better reflect its social justice agenda as Beneficial State Bank.
Beneficial State Bank takes its social mission seriously. The bank is a member of the Social Venture Network and is a registered B Corporation. In fact, B Lab recognizes the bank as qualifying for “Best for Community Impact.”
Beneficial focuses on serving business customers that serve the community in an environmentally friendly way. The bank says:
Typically, mainstream banks work with big businesses that offer conventional products with relatively low risk — but often in a way that bars new, more sustainable ways of meeting our needs, like sustainable agriculture or clean energy. If we want to build our local community economies, then the underserved sectors must become the primary focus of our bank and other organizations committed to local living economies.
The bank focuses on community development business sectors for its lending like affordable housing, sustainable food and agriculture,
The bank has a unique ownership structure. The bank is effectively owned by a foundation so that any and all dividends will be distributed back into the community, supporting nonprofits and environmental efforts.
On August 25, 2014 at noon Eastern, Kat Taylor, Beneficial State Bank CEO, will join me for a live discussion about the bank’s new branding. Tune in then to watch the interview live.
More about Beneficial State Bank:
Beneficial State Bank’s founding team shared a vision to start a bank that finances community-based businesses, builds the long-term prosperity of responsible consumers and supports companies that have a commitment to the environment.
Typically, mainstream banks work with big businesses that offer conventional products with relatively low risk — but often in a way that bars new, more sustainable ways of meeting our needs, like sustainable agriculture or clean energy. If we want to build our local community economies, then the underserved sectors must become the primary focus of our bank and other organizations committed to local living economies.
Related to evolving our means of production, our bank also must create fair and transparent access to financial services to build financial literacy and economic prosperity for all. Those who live and work in local living economies need safe ways to conduct transactions and save money, as well as living wage jobs for reliable prosperity. Our vision is of a banking industry that is fair to the person with the least bargaining power and provides access to financial services for all our communities.
When the bank was created, the founding team donated all the economic shares to the Beneficial State Foundation. That means the Foundation owns all of the economic rights of the Bank — when profits of the Bank are distributed, they can only be distributed to the Foundation which is mandated to reinvest those proceeds back into the communities and the environment on which we all depend. In our theory and experience, this ownership model aligns our incentives with the triple bottom line and the values of our bank customers.
We sum up this philosophy in the phrase “Beneficial Banking.” Beneficial State offers a full line of traditional banking services, but with a distinct focus on the traditionally underserved: low-income communities, sustainable businesses and job creation. And we look for ways to help non-profit organizations and businesses that typically find conventional financing out-of-reach, such as specialty agriculture, renewable energy, green building and low-income housing.
Kat Taylor
Taylor’s bio:
Kat Taylor is CEO of One PacificCoast Bank, a Community Development Financial Institution whose mission is to bring beneficial banking to low-income communities in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner. One PacificCoast Bank is the result of a merger between OneCalifornia Bank, which Kat and her husband, Tom Steyer, founded in Oakland, CACA +0.12%, and ShoreBank Pacific, with offices in Oregon and Washington. The bank’s revolutionary ownership design means that its profits be invested in the communities it serves. Kat is also a founding Director of TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation (TKREF) dedicated to sustainable food production through ranching, tours, research, and school lunch and garden programs.
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