OneUnited executive offers wealth gap ideas
Black-owned firm aims to promote economic equity
Among the personal mementos that decorate OneUnited Bank’s downtown Boston headquarters, Teri Williams looks to one with particular pride: her ancestors’ manumission papers declaring their freedom from slavery.
“It’s important that we appreciate how far we’ve come,” said Williams, the president of the bank.
Williams sees her ancestors’ emancipation as a guiding influence in her work with OneUnited, the largest Blackowned bank in the country.
Since acquiring the bank with her husband in 1995, she has steered it through economic ups and downs, the digital age, and racial reckonings that promised new investments in communities. At points, there was turmoil, including criticism in the press over its ties to an ethics investigation into US Representative Maxine Waters, as well as a cutthroat battle to save the Charles St. AME Church after it defaulted on a construction loan.
But amid all the history, the bank is aiming to further embed itself in Boston’s Black community; it will offer a down payment assistance program to help first-time homebuyers in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, for instance. Williams emphasized other critical roles the bank can continue to play as the city and the nation undergo a racial reckoning in the post-2020 era, as the city considers reparations, and as policymakers explore ways to narrow the region’s yawning racial wealth gap.
The Globe spoke with Williams about her origins in the banking sector, OneUnited’s services, and the role Blackowned banks can play in helping communities address disparities.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BG: Why did you want to acquire the bank?
TW: It definitely was a personal calling. I was always in financial services, but I really wanted to do something that was focused on the Black community. I wanted to take the knowledge that I had learned from all of those different experiences, and figure out how it could help [us]. Growing up, I could never figure out money. I could look around and see that different people had different amounts of money … but I couldn’t figure out why. I don’t think anyone should grow up not understanding money. For me, it was a financial literacy passion, and I have been passionate about it ever since.
BG: There’s been a historic distrust in the Black communi
‘Money that is deposited into Black banks is actually going to the communities that we’re intended to serve. . . . That money is used to support closing the racial wealth gap in the Black community.’ TERI WILLIAMS
ty in banking services. How do you work to rebuild trust?
TW: First of all, we’re FDIC insured. Your money, up to $250,000, is safe no matter what. The second is part of a bigger issue that goes beyond banking. A lot of our community grew up with the saying that “[the white man’s] ice is colder,” which means that if you have a choice between a white store and a Black store, choose the white store because they’re going to provide better services. So there’s an issue of trust.
We’ve seen a huge change in the past five years with the Bank Black movement, the Buy Black movement, the Build Black movement. But the reason that that hadn’t happened [for so long] is because of that trust factor. We’ve been instilled to think that we’re less than. I mean, we have 250 years of slavery, Jim Crow, and everything else, so it’s not surprising that we don’t trust ourselves. But we have to get over it.
Part of [our trust-building] is telling our own story. We have a blog article to talk about all of these things that help our community understand that we’re actually good with money. That the reason that we don’t have money, or the reason for that wealth gap is not because of something we did. It’s actually because of the history where we were once property.
BG: How can Black-owned banks help close the racial wealth gap?
TW: Banking goes where the money is, so opening up a branch in a Wellesley or Brookline where the families have a lot of resources. They have a lot of deposits in the bank, and then they use those deposits to lend to the same community. That’s the way banking is supposed to work. But here in Boston, where the net worth of the Black community is $8 compared to $250,000 for the white community — you’re talking about a community that doesn’t have a lot of resources, but yet, has a lot of hard-working people that are dedicated to helping their families and their businesses grow. Trying to figure out how to put that puzzle together where we can get the capital that the bank needs in order to serve a community with limited resources is hard work, but we love doing it.
The FDIC does a study every five years about the impact of MDIs, or minority depository institutions. From this study, they concluded that Black banks in particular are more likely to lend to Black borrowers, no matter where they are. So that money that is deposited into Black banks is actually going to the communities that we’re intended to serve. To you, it’s just depositing money, it’s your paycheck, or you’re paying bills, but in the case of Black banks, that money is used to support closing the racial wealth gap in the Black community.
BG: Where are Black-owned banks heading?
TW: The next leg of [the] journey is [artificial intelligence]. There is some concern about AI being used in a discriminatory way, but the way we use it is to help us, not hurt us.
We’re about to introduce a new program that uses AI to look at your bank account, and help you make better decisions. We call it WiseOne Insights.
Let’s say [a billing company] overcharged me. It would alert me. If [the program] sees that you have some extra money at the end of the month, it’ll say, ‘Hey, you can move that $50 to your savings account.’
This moves us from just being the holder of your money to an institution that can actually help you make better financial decisions, so that you can build wealth, and really reduce your financial stress.