This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

NOTE: We spoke with this reporter on Nov 30, 2021, This article was published almost a year later, on Oct. 21, 2022. A related article* published in the New York Times on the same day, 10/21/22, seemed to reflect our comments and research.   Morgan Phelps  faced a business conundrum in the summer of 2020. Phelps is the founder of Colorful Connections, a Milwaukee firm that helps businesses attract and retain diverse employees. She formed her business model in 2017 while working in the communications industry. After completing accelerator programs, such as through BizStarts and gener8tor, Phelps took Colorful Connections live in fall 2019. Although demand slowed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Colorful Connections faced a new problem after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. That event energized calls for racial justice and equity across the country. Phelps suddenly had a rush of clients, but the cash flow from that work wouldn’t come u...

On July 24th, I attended a Branchless Banking Roundtable discussion sponsored by the Financial Services Innovation Coalition (FSIC) at the Rayburn House Office Building in D.C.  Panelists include the Co-Founder of BankMobile, Luvleen Sidhu, Founder of Creative Investment Research, William Michael Cunningham, and the founder of HBCU Wall Street, Torrence Reed. The moderator was the founder of FSIC, Kevin B. Kimble. During the hour-long discussion, they discussed issues related to the inefficiency of bank branches, the problem of bank transaction fees, and how newly developed technologies can change people’s way of banking. The discussion kicked off with agreement among the panelists that bank branches are no longer a necessary part of people’s banking experience. Based on statistics, bank branches are, on average, only getting one account opened each week per branch, which equals 52 accounts opened a year at each branch. Apparently, the influence of bank branches on ...