Diversity and equality

Goldman Sachs Group faces a June 5 trial in a long-simmering gender-bias class action alleging the bank discriminated against thousands of women in pay and promotion.

For a government agency that prefers to move gradually, the change at the top has come fast, thanks in large part to increased pressure in the wake of a national reckoning around diversity. But it has also fallen short in some ways.

Younger and more diverse leaders may better represent the local community. But bringing new people into the board room requires persistent and targeted outreach.

BMO Financial is expanding its efforts to recruit "underleveraged" job candidates among families fleeing war and hunger abroad. Refugees offer businesses diverse skills and have lower turnover rates than typical North American workers.

Through unconscious bias assessments, analysis and industry partnerships, financial institutions are working to meet the diverse needs of current and future talent.

For too long, Community Reinvestment Act enforcement has relied on income to serve as a proxy for race. This must stop.

The San Francisco megabank plans to reinstate guidance that drew scrutiny following revelations that women and nonwhite candidates were interviewed for jobs that had been reserved for someone else.

Monetary policy has a more significant impact on spending of U.S. households headed by white women than on those led by white men or Black men and women, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said.

It is essential to place the central focus on race, to bring nondepository mortgage lenders under the Community Reinvestment Act umbrella and to address bias in home appraisals.

Three Black-owned U.S. banks have bought a piece of a $1.23 billion syndicated corporate loan, a rare move in a market typically dominated by bigger Wall Street and regional lenders.  

First introduced in 2020, the Fair Access to Financial Services Act would require banks to serve all customers in a manner similar to existing requirements for hotels and restaurants under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

HSBC Holdings' U.K. unit is planning to stop collecting data on the gender of its customers across some products as the bank pursues more inclusive services for nonbinary and trans people.

Totem's digital banking app is the first created by and for Native Americans. The challenger bank will help each of its partner tribes offer uniquely branded apps that provide banking services, distribute government assistance and teach users how to build their credit.

Community development financial institutions will receive low-interest loans from Bank of America and use that money to fund the development of primary health care centers in communities of color and rural areas.

Bank and financial services supervisors have an affirmative duty to address the deep economic divide facing minorities in the U.S.

For many credit unions, it's important to not only have underrepresented voices in the C-suite — they must also make sure others can follow a career path to the same roles.

A panel of FINRA arbitrators unanimously ordered the award against the megabank based on Erin Ann Daly’s claims of gender-based discrimination.

Democratic senators led by Bob Menendez urged the Federal Reserve to take a more active role in the selection process of the heads of its regional banks so that more diverse candidates would be considered.

OneAZ Credit Union built a vendor diversity database, based on a program from Arizona State University, to guide its spending at small businesses. It plans to allow other financial institutions to access this system as well.

The state-sponsored entity plans to launch a $250 million “community decarbonization fund” to finance electrification, energy efficiency and onsite power projects in disadvantaged communities.