Diversity and equality

Last year, many banks made big, splashy pledges to advance racial equity. Now some of those banks are seeking to hold executives accountable for those efforts through their paychecks.

Under a plan signed into law in March, the agency will first target direct loans that it has made to socially disadvantaged farmers. Guidance that will affect small banks that have made government-backed agricultural loans is due in 120 days.

The feature prints users' preferred name on credit and debit cards, and is live in the U.S. with Citigroup, BMO Harris and Superbia Credit Union.

Bank of America is expanding a mortgage program for low- to moderate-income homebuyers in an effort to address racial wealth gaps.

The Dallas bank appointed Sonya Trac to lead business development in communities that have been hit hard by both the pandemic-induced recession and a recent wave of discrimination. It is also depositing $2.5 million at a Los Angeles bank that serves Asian Americans.

Daylight, a digital banking platform for the LGBT community, uses its customers’ preferred names on debit cards rather than their legal names. Through a new social media campaign, the company is encouraging the American Bankers Association and its members to do the same.

Minority-led community development entities often lose out in getting NMTC support. They know best which investments will have the greatest impact on communities of color.

Many big companies have made pledges to diversify their workforces, treat minority communities more fairly and clean up the environment to burnish their images, says Meredith Benton, CEO of the consultancy Whistle Stop Capital. But few are willing to share data to prove it's all more than a PR campaign, she says.

Eighteen months after launching Second Chance in Chicago, JPMorgan is bringing the recruitment effort to Columbus, Ohio.

The lender will expand certain mortgage products, like its HomeRun program, which requires lower down payments and removes mortgage-insurance requirements for lower-income borrowers.

“You all will not let me breathe” is just one example in the CFPB’s complaint database where a consumer likened alleged mistreatment by a financial institution to social injustice. An artificial intelligence firm uses technology to help companies flag such language.

A report to Congress from the National Credit Union Administration says the regulator has made "steady strides" toward greater diversity in its workforce and operations, but that progress is "just the beginning."

The agency has suggested it could go beyond enforcing fair-lending laws to urge financial institutions to help narrow the wealth gap. But those very same laws pose obstacles to achieving that goal.

After Wells Fargo became the first of the largest U.S. banks to do away with mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment complaints last year, Goldman Sachs Group is being urged to take steps in the same direction.

Activist investors are pressuring big banks to further curtail lending to the fossil-fuel industry, undergo so-called racial-equity audits and disclose more about their lobbying practices and financing of nuclear weapons manufacturers.

The credit union has made a four-year commitment to support the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and Greenwood Rising, a local history center.

Mehrsa Baradaran, a University of California, Irvine, professor and former banking lawyer, has worked hard to close the racial wealth gap and could further such goals as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, wrote 34 caucus members in a letter to President Biden.

JPMorgan Chase said it plans to hire 300 additional Black and Latinx wealth advisers by 2025 to serve more clients from those communities and allow employees from diverse backgrounds to advance in their careers.

Brown, who was most recently Goldman's chief diversity officer, will join Citigroup in the coming months as chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and global head of talent.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase also received high marks for transparency in reporting how they are paying women and employees of color, but Goldman Sachs, KeyCorp and Citizens Financial Group still have work to do, according to the advocacy investor firms Arjuna Capital and Proxy Impact.