By Vincent Siciliano, president and CEO, New Resource Bank
At New Resource Bank, we\’re out to change banking.
People tend to be surprised when we say that – at the ambition, certainly, but also at hearing that sentiment coming from bankers. We truly believe that banking can be more than just a service; it can be a way to create a better world.
Our mission is to advance sustainability with everything we do – the loans we make, the way we operate and our commitment to putting deposits to work for good. That mission is our passion and our reason for existence as a bank – and that makes the bank an agent of change. Not only do we want to change the way banking is done and the way people think about banking, we also want to change the way people think about and use their money.
One aspect is how people invest their money – and many people don\’t consider that when they deposit money in bank accounts, it\’s being invested. So do they invest their money with an institution that uses it for projects around the world that the depositor would be ashamed to be associated with? Or do they invest it with an institution that will in turn invest it in ways that support their values?
A Brief History
A group of successful entrepreneurs, bankers and business leaders founded New Resource Bank in 2006 with a vision of bringing new resources to sustainable businesses and ultimately creating more-sustainable communities. It was clearly an idea whose time had come: New Resource\’s initial stock offering was 60 percent oversubscribed, and the bank opened with 240 founding shareholders, including Triodos Bank and RSF Social Finance. A secondary offering in September 2008 brought in Generation Investment Management, a sustainability-focused firm cofounded by Al Gore and David Blood.
The bank grew rapidly, in part by adding individual depositors and working with sustainability-oriented businesses, and in part by making classic community bank loans (for local construction projects, for example). But like many institutions across the country, New Resource was hit hard by the financial meltdown of late 2008, and faced the need to reassess and retrench.
Were we going to be a general community bank with expertise in green and sustainable living, or were we going to be a mission-oriented bank that focused all of its efforts on sustainable living? We chose the latter path, and that reenergized our employees, our board and all of our stakeholders.
In 2010, New Resource underscored our sustainability commitment by becoming a Certified B Corporation. As many of you know, B Corporations meet comprehensive social and environmental performance standards; New Resource was the first publicly traded company (on the OTCBB) to sign on.
Delivering On Our Mission
We are now throwing our hearts and minds into delivering on the bank\’s mission. This involves work in several dimensions:
- Expanding our loans to mission-related businesses and providing a rich customer experience that includes helping our business clients meet the challenge of operating sustainably and profitably.
- Continually improving our own operational sustainability.
- Ensuring that New Resource Bank is a great place to work that attracts and retains highly talented and committed people.
- Increasing our involvement in the community and public policy to amplify our impact.
Business Clients
Our loans provide growth and working capital to businesses in the clean energy, energy efficiency, organic food, green products and green building fields. We also work with traditional businesses that are committed to sustainable operations.
One way we track the sustainability of our portfolio and help our clients progress on the sustainability path is our Client Sustainability Assessment, which all new and renewing commercial lending clients take. The assessment pinpoints where a client is on a four-level sustainability scale: Learner, Achiever, Leader or Champion. Upon completing the assessment, clients receive a tool kit geared to their results that provides guidance on becoming more sustainable. Our goal is to have customers advance to the next level – or higher – with each successive assessment. In the first group of 40 to complete the assessment, the majority scored above the Learner (beginner) level, indicating that they\’ve already put serious efforts into sustainability.
Clients also benefit from our network of sustainability leaders and our bankers\’ expertise in sustainable business sectors. For example, New Resource is one of the few institutions with a solar banking practice. Our understanding of the complexities of power purchase agreements, the underlying tax equity investing requirements and the role of government subsidies allows us to tailor the right loan for a particular project.
Nonprofit Services
As part of our community commitment, we collaborate with nonprofits to advance their mission and provide creative ways for them to save money and increase donations. New Resource donates $25 to nonprofit customers for every checking account opened by their employees and friends and maintained for six months. In addition, our Planet-Smart Rewards Partner program donates cash to our nonprofit partners with every swipe of a New Resource Bank Planet-Smart Debit Card. We also give nonprofits discounts on premium business services.
Personal Banking
Individual depositors typically are attracted to New Resource by our unusual level of personal service and the satisfaction of knowing that their money is working to support a more sustainable world. We also offer innovative products such as Solar CDs and home equity loans for energy efficiency upgrades.
Operational Sustainability
Acting on our credo – “rethink, rebuild, renew” – New Resource seeks to model sustainability with our LEED Gold–rated headquarters, Green-e certified renewable energy certificates, ongoing initiatives to reduce our resource consumption, community contributions and programs that educate and engage customers.
Our staff-led Values in Action Committee and Green Team are instrumental in making sure the bank lives up to sustainability principles. For example, employee leadership led us to reuse, recycle and compost enough to divert 95 percent of our waste from landfill. (Our website has an extensive list of our sustainability efforts.)
Community Involvement
New Resource employees actively participate in community activities and organizations. One of our bankers moonlights as an unpaid intern for Amazon Watch. Another works with the Surfrider Foundation. Others volunteer for beach clean-ups or serve on the boards of community service organizations.
Perhaps our most significant effort as an institution, however, is our stepped-up involvement in public policy. We\’ve been working at the city and state level to promote policies that encourage energy efficiency and retrofit financing. Bank leaders were instrumental in passing property-assessed clean energy (PACE) legislation in California. We\’re participating in state senate efforts to develop policies that will dramatically accelerate commercial retrofit activity in California. The bank is a member of San Francisco\’s Business Council on Climate Change (BC3), and Bill Peterson, our executive vice president and chief credit officer, serves on the advisory board for the city\’s Climate Action Plan, an aggressive effort to drive down the city\’s greenhouse gas emissions. We also work on national issues through the American Sustainable Business Council and have a seat on the board of Green America, which not only promotes green practices at the personal and corporate level but also advocates for innovative policy changes. Efforts like these are key to producing the lasting change we seek.
Looking To The Future
Our immediate focus is on helping companies and organizations in Northern California manage from the perspective of a triple bottom line. As we get better and better at developing these kinds of trusted advisor relationships, we see ourselves expanding beyond Northern California to other parts of the country that have favorable demographics and business bases for our mission. We want to be the best bank in the world at providing sustainable business expertise.
Looking at the bigger picture, it really is possible that we are on the brink of fundamental changes in the way our economy works in terms of growth rates, unemployment rates, savings, and beginning to rethink what capitalism stands for and how it deals with social and environmental impacts.
People have been talking about these things for decades, but it seems most of them believed that a little regulation on the margins was sufficient and that the markets would be self-correcting. We certainly can see from the explosion of the financial markets in 2008 that a little regulation was far from sufficient to save the finance system and that when it was left unfettered, the risk built up. The real solution is not vastly more regulation – though there is a significant role for the government to play – but a rethinking of values and purpose.
A bank is uniquely positioned to be an agent of change, and in our case we have values of sustainability, transparency and community that drive the direction of the change we want to see in the communities we live and work in. Ultimately, the solution to the problems we face is for people to get focused not only on people, planet and profit, but also on their own underlying purpose: What do you want to accomplish? What\’s your legacy? What do you want to get out of life?
We gained fresh inspiration on this from attending the third annual meeting of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values in Peru in March. The alliance committed to redoubling efforts in five areas: people-first financial services, transparent banking, full accountability throughout the global financial services industry, public education and financial literacy, and policy changes to support sustainable banking. At New Resource Bank we seek to lead in these areas.
New Resource Bank is a founding member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, a Green America board member, an American Sustainable Business Council advisory board member, a member of the Green Chamber of Commerce and the Western Independent Bankers, a Certified B Corporation and a San Francisco–certified Green Business.
For more information on New Resource Bank go to http://www.newresourcebank.com
Article by Vincent Siciliano, President and CEO, New Resource Bank
