96. The World's Most Socially Responsible Bank

Today we’re going to be talking about the world’s most socially responsible bank. Back in episode 90 it came up that there’s a bank called Sunrise Bank that calls itself the world’s most socially responsible bank. What a claim right? I was intrigued.

So naturally I did some internet research. And what I found sort of speaks to some of the limitations of ESG that you’ve heard about on this show today. ESG is the popular catch phrase that is supposed to stand in for whether a company is socially responsible or not. Unfortunately, the reality is that ESG actually measures how risky your investment is in that company according to the risks they take with the environment, their employees, and the way they regulate themselves. You can listen to episode 76 the surprising truth about what ESG actually means.

So when I started researching the most socially responsible banks and what it would even mean for a bank to call itself the most socially responsible bank in the world, what I found were a lot of banks that were using the ESG criteria to say they were the most socially responsible. So for example, there’s a Mexican bank called Banorte that was apparently named the most socially responsible bank by Statista a German data company and Newsweek, but they way they calculated that was based on their ESG scores. They scored high on Environmental concerns because they have priortized reducing their emissions and energy use, they scored high on the social score because of the diversity of their employees, their philanthropy and engagement, and finally, they scored highly on the corporate governance score because they scored high in terms of their transparency as a bank, their disclosures.

This left me wanting a little more. Even if a bank is knocking it out of the park according to these measures, I don’t know that I would consider them socially responsible. What are they doing with all that cash? Who are the lending to? Who are they not lending to? And which political campaigns do they fund? And you know what, it is possible that Banorte scores great on those measures as well, it just wasn’t explicitly used as part of what qualified them for this rating of the world’s most socially responsible bank.

Back in episode 30 I shared a tool that you might like to see how well your bank stacks up and maybe look for a new bank if you’re unsatisfied with how your bank is lining up with your values.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t include international banks so I wasn’t able to get a more holistic sense of Banorte and some of these broader questions I was wondering about, so I’m just not sure.

There is a bank in the US that is marketing itself as the “world’s most socially responsible bank.” It is called Sunrise Bank. 

And according to third party evaluators, they do score really well for being socially responsible. For every $100 we deposit at this bank, $65 goes into community investments, that is 75% more than the national average. They scored above average in small business lending, also in investing in public works. They are a certified B corp. They are also a certified community development financial institution which means they invest in low income areas. 

They have this cool feature where if you have an account with them, you can decide that you want your savings account to be part of their impact deposit fund, and that means that it is a normal savings account, you can get access to your money whenever you want, but the bank designates that money to be used for affordable housing, community services, economic development, and small businesses. Isn’t that cool?

The big banks could never. Can you imagine if Wells Fargo let us designate the money in the accounts they opened under our names without our permission and then were somehow legally still allowed to operate as a bank let us designate our accounts for community impact. It could never happen. LoL. If you work in the sponsorships department of Wells Fargo, email me anytime if you want to talk sponsorships. LoL. Somebody has to pay for all of this recording equipment lol.

I’m kidding. Unless they’re going to do it.

So that’s it for today, this episode will be a little short as my voice recovers from the cough that has been going around.

If you bank with Sunrise holler at me, or if you have switched banks after listening to this show, get in touch. Maybe there’s another topic you want to hear, as long as it has to do with lining up our values and our money, it is fair game!

Email the show at spend donate invest at gmail dot com.

Talk soon!