The African American community is starting to wake up. Here are the facts: African-American consumers will have a buying power of $1.3 trillion by the year of 2017. However, the Black dollar circulates in the African American community for only a few hours, opposed to other communities where their dollar circulates for weeks. The African American community understands that it starts with economics.

Experts on Black economics, like Dr. Claud Anderson, Dr. Dennis Kimbro, and Maggie Anderson, have been pushing the African American community to not only spend but to also invest. According to Atlanta Daily World, Black-owned bank Citizens Trust Bank, opened over 8,000 accounts this month. This is the first step in the right direction. This act of group economics, like Chinatown, Italian Market, etc, is motivating Black people to take back their financial influence. However, keeping the accounts is another battle. Black-owned banks can win by these recommendations:

• Superior Customer Service
  • Recently, a Facebook friend tried to open an account at a Black-owned bank in Philadelphia. She waited for one hour on a slow day. This is highly unacceptable. Customer Service is the main ingredient in keeping a client. There’s a saying that I learned when I worked for MBNA America (which was acquired by Bank of America), “Good customer service will be told by 100 people, bad customer service will be told by 10,000 people.” I have worked in the Customer Service industry for 10 years, so I will write a separate, detailed article about this.
• Be a Fiduciary
  • In the financial industry, a fiduciary is a financial representative that acts in the best interest of the client. Although there is current legislation to remove fiduciary responsibilities from the financial institutions, Black-owned banks do not have the luxury of not participating. Clients will be more confident in doing business with fiduciary representatives.

• Remain Competitive
  • Black owned banks have to remember that competition will remain. Clients understand that banks have to generate revenue, but clients don’t like to be nickeled and dimed or they will leave. Competitive fees and APR’s (annual percentage rate) are attractive to new clients.

• Reinvest
  • They should reinvest back into the community by offering commercial loans to other Black owned businesses. For those businesses that are not able to obtain funding, banks should assist the borrower with programs and other lending options.

• Remain Black Owned AND Operated
  • When black-owned businesses say that they hire the best, they hire colorblind. However other ethnicities hire the best, they generally hire their own. Black-owned businesses can also do the same. With the rise of Black college graduates and those who also have their MBA, there’s no reason why they are not able to find Black financial professionals. This will play an important part in the Black employment report.

• Hire Black Contractors
  • For the services that are out of scope, as such as technology, facilities, etc. make sure that those businesses are also Black owned and operated. This will help to keep the Black dollar circulating in our community and to keep Black people employed. Contact the local African American Chamber of Commerce as well as utilizing an online Black Business directory to find those contractors.

• Community Outreach
  • Education is paramount. Not everyone is informed about the purpose of Black-owned banks. Banks do not have to necessarily give money, but they can do community service in the neighborhood. They should have seminars on wealth management at community centers and places of worship.

• Expand Services
  • Offering additional products and services will increase revenue. It could include investment accounts like mutual funds, IRAs (individual retirement account), CDs (certificate of deposit), annuities, or secured credit cards with low APRs (which is an excellent way for those with bad credit to improve their credit score). Technology should be updated. Websites should be of high quality and mobile friendly with an optional app.

• Maintain Integrity
  • The integrity of the bank is very important. In the last decade or so banks acted irresponsibly. This caused a distrust with financial institutions and their clients. Most banks have policies on how to handle unethical issues within their institution. Banks should also list their code of ethics on their website.

• Improvements
  • The best way to improve is to get feedback from clients and other stakeholders. This can be accomplished by conducting surveys and reading online reviews. Although it’s great to receive positive feedback, but the best feedback is the critical ones.

As an African American with a Summa Cum Laude degree in Business Administration and a conscience consumer, I intend to open an account at a Black-owned financial institution. I know that they are people who don’t understand this, so let me give you some more context. In Chinatown, or Koreatown, the one thing that you will find at the center of their community is their own bank. If they can do it, we can too.