Profiles in Commitment: Wainwright Bank

Excerpt from the book,
"Megatrends 2010"
By Patricia Aburdene

September, 2005

Well, it sounded great to me. I was sold on the financial and moral superiority of SRI. Why not go all the way and find a community bank?

Turns out, I didn't have to find one at all. On my way to Behemoth Bank in Kendall Square, which I am now divorcing, I walk right past one of the finest community banks ever, the Wainwright Bank, with ten branches in the Boston area.

More than 40 percent of Wainwright's commercial loan portfolio-a total of $400 million in loan commitments-supports a Who's Who of Boston area nonprofits: the Pine Street Inn, New England's largest homeless shelter; the Greater Boston Food Bank, which feeds 465,000 people a month; Rosie's Place, the first drop-in and emergency shelter for women in the U.S. I knew none of this.

I've peeked into Wainwright dozens of times and never thought it had a thing to do with socially responsible investing or that Wainwright has won tons of SRI awards. Wainwright is, for example, one of:

o SustainableBusiness.com's top 20 sustainable businesses-in the world, not just the U.S.,
o Social Investment Forum's (SIF) "Top 10 Green Banking Firms,"
o SIF's "Top 11 Best Lenders to Women."

Why don't they plaster these kudos on the window?

Once I got the picture, I happily gave them my business. I was a bit surprised that Wainwright's interest rates beat my old bank's...But my psychic returns are even higher.

o The 12th largest bank in the state, Wainwright financed more than $11 million in AIDS housing, half of the area's total, to places like Wish House, a Dorchester, Massachusetts, home for formerly homeless women and children living with AIDS.

o Wainwright bankrolled $75 million worth of affordable housing, including a $500,000 loan to rehab Victory House, a transitional housing program for 25 homeless and low income men with substance abuse problems.

o Wainwright loaned $1.8 million to the Family Center, a mental health facility whose clients are struggling with poverty, racism and violence. Each year the Center helps more than 2,000 families; 54 percent of clients earn less than $20,000 and 44 percent are people of color.

Wainwright's DNA is so deeply encoded with the commitment to social justice, you almost forget it's a bank, with more than $760 million in assets, that offers commercial loans, home mortgages, lines of credit and private banking. It might also slip your mind that Wainwright makes money, a lot of money and at an impressive rate: Net income in 2004 hit $6.4 million, up from $4.7 million in 2003. Earnings per share rose from 55 cents in 2001 to 94 cents in 2004.

And guess what? Community investing is the best-performing sector of Wainwright's lending portfolio. The default rate? About zero percent.

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