Photo Courtesy of Twitter (@hjtherealj)
Utah is about to have its very first Black-owned bank.
The Redemption Holding Company, a Black-owned Delaware public benefit corporation, announced
on Tuesday that it was purchasing the Utah-based Holladay Bank and Trust, making RHC the state’s first Black-owned bank.RHC will be official once the pending federal regulatory approval goes through and the infrastructure is completed.
Ashley D. Bell, former White House Policy Advisor and Small Business Administration Regional Administrator, will be RHC’s executive chairman and CEO. Dr. Bernice A. King, the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King’s daughter, will be the bank’s senior vice president of corporate strategy and alliances. Former NFL player and investor Dhani Jones will be on the advisory board as well as King and Bell.
“Black banks make the American dream possible for all Americans by deploying resources that uniquely address the financial realities of communities that have been systematically excluded, overcharged, and under-capitalized for hundreds of years,” Bell said. “Redemption will serve as a lifeline to the next wave of Black and Brown first-time home buyers and small business entrepreneurs across the country.”
King and Bell are familiar with the banking industry. They’re co-founders of the National Black Bank Foundation, and thanks to the foundation, $600 million of deal generation has been placed into Black banks since 2020.
Like her father, King wants to increase “financial inclusion” through Black banks.
“In my father’s last public address on April 3, 1968, he preached the imperative to accelerate the financial inclusion of Black Americans by supporting mission-driven Black banks—something he called a ‘bank-in movement,'” Dr. King said. “More than half a century of struggle and incremental progress later, we’re making good on daddy’s call to bank-in by creating new centers of opportunity for people of color, starting with this Black-led bank acquisition. Redemption is just that: delivering families from the cycle of unjust financial exclusion and intergenerational poverty.”
According to the news release, Holladay Bank and Trust had about $68 million in total assets and $56 million in deposits by December 2022. The company plans to keep the current staff and management team and offer a digital banking platform for customers.