Boston Globe, October 30th, 2017: Santander Bank executives on Monday unveil an $11 billion, five-year pledge for community investments across the company’s eight-state footprint
“Its new “Inclusive Communities” plan will represent about a 50 percent increase in annual community reinvestment spending from 2015 levels.
‘You can almost call it a pivotal year, because of the significant things that have happened,’ Powell said.
The Inclusive Communities plan has been in the works for months, and involved input from dozens of groups across the Northeast. Most of the spending will involve loans to underserved communities, including mortgages for low- and moderate-income families, small-business loans and community development loans.
John Taylor, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said the bank’s leadership was clearly motivated by the “needs to improve” grade.
‘They’ve been struggling to get their mooring,” Taylor said. “It was good that the executives [at Santander] got it in their head that this was something they needed to do.’”
