GoodBank
SUMMARY: GoodBank™ is the high transparency design for a commercial bank, reconnecting money and meaning. Saving, shopping and investing true to one’s ethical values improves customer’s credit rating at the bank, earns cash-back rewards for environmental and social causes, and inspires new transparency tools to enhance social financial literacy.
PROBLEM SPACE: 95% of U.S. bank assets are loans. Loans made without seeing their impacts assure that banks remain unresponsive to community needs, hide consumptive credit card spending patterns, and force sustainable businesses to subsidize loans to unethical competitors. Predatory lending thrives through unseen impacts. The social sector’s growth slows when banks ignore good impacts.
SOLUTION: GoodBank has been in development for several years, and benefits from bank consolidations of the past two years. A seasoned management and advisory team has been recruited, and is collaborating on the business plan and technology roadmap for GoodBank. An investor business plan (25+ pages) and a 75-page business plan in the format required by federal bank regulators (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) have been drafted. So as to be transparent and open to community input, a project wiki discusses GoodBank’s organizational, operational, technology and social strategies. Talented bank CEOs, CFOs, credit risk officers, user experience designers, branding specialists and technologists have come together to craft the vision and timeline for rolling out GoodBank’s consumer, business, foundation, NGO and municipal banking services. A LEED architect is drafting conceptual designs for bank branch layout, so as to enhance user experience and social financial literacy in an intimate space blending Apple Store and Bailey Savings & Loan metaphors. Collaborative discussions are ongoing with corporate venture capitalists, foundations pursuing mission related investment strategies and existing banks in the U.S. and abroad that practice and want to extend the services of socially-responsive/green/ethical banking.