Dear reader,
Welcome to the latest edition of The Forum File. In this edition, we are highlighting our firms’ work to support people in historically underserved communities.
We hope you enjoy reading this edition and please do not hesitate to share your feedback.
Kevin Fromer, President and CEO, Financial Services Forum
Penny For Your Thoughts
Kevin McCarthy, Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel at BNY Mellon
BNY Mellon recently won the 2023 City Bar Justice Award from The New York City Bar Association. How do you promote employee engagement in pro bono efforts?
We strongly encourage Legal Department employees to devote time each year to community focused work like pro bono volunteerism, and it is embedded into our employees’ goal-setting and performance-management process. To support this, BNY Mellon has a robust employee giving and volunteer program with a variety of benefits like company matching for employees’ donations to the charities of their choice and three days of paid volunteer time. All told, we’ve provided about $5 million in consulting services to non-profits and individuals in need over the last five years. With our pro bono program, we work on a diverse range of projects, many of them focused on racial justice initiatives.
How does BNY Mellon measure the program’s success?
Our pro bono program aligns to our firm’s overall philanthropic strategy — to use our skills and power to provide impactful legal services to underserved communities across our global network. Our program is inclusive to everyone – attorneys and our employees in other functions – to maximize its impact. To measure the success of the program annually we monitor our employee participation metrics, analyze feedback from the organizations and people we support and reflect on the impact of our body of pro bono work. There is always room to widen our reach, strengthen our impact and be more inclusive.
What kind of impact does the program have?
I have the pleasure of serving on the board of the BNY Mellon Foundation and I’ve seen first-hand the impact of the company’s $20 million, multiyear commitment to education and workforce development organizations on both individuals and communities. Funding scholarships for first-generation students at impressive institutions like the City University of New York and Historically Black Colleges and Universities can have a life-changing impact on young people and their families. Driven by our unwavering commitment to upholding human rights, BNY Mellon and its employees have responded to humanitarian crises in places like Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Turkey to meet the needs of vulnerable populations and protect refugees.
Can you expand on BNY Mellon’s Covid-19 relief and recovery efforts?
At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, we helped to bolster the global health infrastructure by collaborating with organizations like the CDC Foundation, International Medical Corps, the New York Blood Center, Ad Council and Save the Children as well as organizations providing critical equipment and resources to those on the frontlines and most impacted by the virus. In 2020, the company facilitated nearly $6 million in funding to COVID relief and recovery worldwide and double-matched employee donations to the cause.
Value Add
How BNY Mellon leverages its role in global financial markets to make a positive impact on society.
BNY Mellon’s scale and significance place it in a privileged position, but also grant the firm the responsibility of helping the financial system work better for everyone. From Treasury Services to Clearance and Collateral Management to Pershing, BNY Mellon can export its positions and global capabilities to communities around the world through strategic alliances with other financial firms.
BNY Mellon’s commitment to improving diversity and inclusion extends to the markets in which the firm operates. A highlight of some of its recent collaborations with diverse businesses:
- Howard University: BNY Mellon worked to establish BOLD Shares, to help support students of Howard University and boost retention rates. This investing initiative has recently grown to over $4.3 billion in assets after just over a year, as of April 14, 2023.
- Optus: BNY Mellon works with South Carolina-based Optus Bank, a federally designated Minority Depository Institution, to expand its capacity, market reach and community reinvestment opportunities with BNY Mellon products, services and infrastructure.
- Loop Capital: By leveraging BNY Mellon resources, minority owned Loop Capital gained a single access point to the full breadth of BNY Mellon’s business, and a full suite of services including expertise in bonds, equities, international trading, investment banking, public finance and clearing services.
The firm is making proactive and deliberate efforts throughout 2023 to include more communities in successful commercial outcomes.
Capital Gains
What we’re doing in Washington
The Forum released its latest Policy Cents video featuring Chief Economist Sean Campbell on large banks and the important role they play in supporting American competitiveness abroad. Watch the latest video and the rest of our series here.
Following the Federal Reserve’s release of its annual bank stress test scenarios, the Forum issued a statement highlighting the strength and resiliency of the nation’s largest banks.
The Forum highlighted how policymakers voiced that the nation’s largest banks are resilient and well capitalized.
Our Two Cents
Research from the Forum
The BankNotes Blog Spotlighted:
- An analysis of the impact of counterfactually high COVID-related losses to Forum banks, without the government’s fiscal support, demonstrating that without the massive fiscal support and in the face of counterfactually high hypothetical losses, Forum member capital levels would have remained robust, allowing them to support the economy during the pandemic.
- The ways in which large banks provide significant benefits to the economy and how their size and scope help them to efficiently achieve the primary function of the banking sector – connecting savers and borrowers.
Checking the Balance
Members in the news
Bank of America announced its Community Development Banking (CDB) business provided $7.85 billion in loans, tax credit equity investments, and other real estate development solutions in 2022 to help build strong, sustainable communities through affordable housing and economic development across the country. This marked its sixth consecutive record year of financing. CDB also invested $200 million in Historic Tax Credits and New Markets Tax Credits to help restore historically significant buildings and create more than 1,300 affordable housing units.
BNY Mellon has been honored with the American Red Cross Corporate Leadership Award for the firm’s dedication to giving back and making an impact in communities through philanthropy. The American Red Cross and BNY Mellon have worked together for nearly four decades to support people and communities rebuilding in times of crisis.
The Citi Foundation announced its first-ever Global Innovation Challenge to help scale the impact of nonprofits around the world that are developing innovative solutions to improve food security. This inaugural challenge will provide a collective $25 million to 50 organizations to support the piloting or expansion of ideas and projects that are designed to address this issue and strengthen the physical and financial health of low-income families and communities.
Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women initiative announced that its partnership with the International Finance Corporation, The Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility, has reached over 164,000 women entrepreneurs, surpassing the target of 100,000 set at launch nine years ago, and has provided over $4.5 billion in loans to women-owned businesses. The first-of-its-kind global facility is dedicated to promoting access to finance for women-owned small and mid-size enterprises through financial institutions.
JPMorgan Chase announced the deployment of the first $2 million across four organizations to advance racial equity in the Miami tech sector. BrainStation, a program of Miami Foundation, CodePath, Rebrand Cities, and YWCA of South Florida working with gener8tor, will each receive $500,000 to empower underrepresented Miamians to enter and thrive in the tech industry through technology workforce training, career services and support for small businesses. In 2022, JPMorgan Chase announced it was committing $10 million toward the $100 million Tech Equity Miami initiative.
Morgan Stanley announced the second cohort of winners of its Alliance for Children’s Mental Health Innovation Awards, an initiative that aims to identify and fund transformative mental healthcare solutions for children and young adults across the U.S. Each of the winning organizations will receive a $100,000 grant to help scale its solutions, as well as support through training on nonprofit management topics from experts in the field, awareness-raising and additional fundraising opportunities.
State Street sponsored the 3rd annual California Conference for Women. The mission of the conferences is to promote, communicate and amplify the influence of women in the workplace and beyond. Influential experts led practical workshops on the issues, including leadership, career advancement, workplace equity and inclusion, health, work/life balance and more.
Wells Fargo announced a $50 million grant to the NAACP, the nation’s largest civil rights and social justice organization. The grant will assist NAACP local units and branches and will support their work to grow strategic partnerships with key businesses in communities across the country. In addition, at the national level, the grant will support the NAACP’s work on policy solutions used to address the needs of the communities it serves. The grant is the single largest donation the civil rights organization has received to date.