To Build Trust with Black Communities, Banks Must Co-Design with Them

Growing up Black in America, I’ve tried to understand the trust issues that Black American communities have often had with government and financial institutions.

There was a time when newly freed, formerly enslaved Black people, with good reason to mistrust, chose to place their hopes, dreams, and deposits in the Freedman’s Savings Bank, a federal financial institution created to keep money safe and support future planning. However, after the failure of that bank and the severe psychological impact of repeated acts of terror impeding Black individual and collective success, it’s no wonder that today’s financial institutions have not earned much trust from Black communities.

The Trust Fracture

I remember hearing stories from my own community about people keeping their money under mattresses, which provided more security than an institution that could fail. Of course, I also learned about the American government’s history of disrespecting and oppressing Black people.

There were many opportunities when local, state, and federal governments could have protected Black communities from white hate, but for too much of our history, those calls went unanswered. For 18 hours, Greenwood’s Black Wall Street in Tulsa was burned and looted by the Ku Klux Klan before National Guard Troops arrived the following morning. The failure of the Freedman’s Bank and acts of terror like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre taught Black communities to be wary of trusting the established order. Black families learned that security frequently required going unnoticed or flying under the radar. In such an environment, the rationale for distrust is not mysterious. It has been a clear and logical response to a system that repeatedly and continuously limited Black self-determination and punished Black progress.

There were many opportunities when local, state, and federal governments could have protected Black communities from white hate, but for too much of our history, those calls went unanswered.

Individual Excellence

Over time, the same driving resilience that carried Black people through slavery and its aftermath did not disappear—it adapted. For many families, survival relied on supporting the individual achievements of their brightest children, following a kind of “Talented Tenth” logic in which the few Black individuals who could join the professional class would receive the majority of resources, enabling them to use their positional power to “save the race.” In many ways, that was a practical way for communities to invest in the future doctors, teachers, preachers, and leaders they needed.

I knew that my passion and work extended to lifting up the many people who would never get that chance.

This mindset developed and spread at the dawn of the 19th century, as higher education institutions were in their formative years. Over a century later, it influenced me while I was attending Morehouse College, one of the just over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in existence today. My role as a “Man of Morehouse” was to allow myself to be shaped into a holistic leader of tomorrow. And while it felt like I was going to be endowed with some mystical essence just by having graduated from Morehouse, I knew that my passion and work extended to lifting up the many people who would never get that chance.

As desegregation became normalized, success meant leaving—moving into spaces willing to accept Black families as exceptions, proof of progress, while the communities they came from remained under-resourced. Alongside that shift came a new story about self-determination from the Nixon era, called “Black capitalism,” which sought to accelerate Black progress through private enterprise. Responsibility for solving social and economic problems in Black communities was increasingly shifted away from government and onto Black business leaders who themselves were expected to create jobs and stimulate community development.

As professional-class Black families migrated to suburban America, Black-owned banks were positioned as part of the solution to financial needs within Black capitalism—expanding lending for homeownership and small businesses. But many Black-owned banks struggled within a dominant banking model built for a wealthier customer base, and the constraints of the broader system severely limited what they could sustainably do. Although there were parts of banking that Black communities desperately needed to thrive, its standard practices continued (and still continue) to stifle rather than foster Black progress.

Shared Success

Following the normal course of business under American capitalism has not benefited the Black community as a whole. We need to foreground the interconnection of our collective stories to change the narrative that Black success is only achievable by the few who can navigate the existing system. People need to be allowed to build on their own realities rather than be forced to adapt to traditional, individualistic, and extractive approaches to community development. My hope is that realizing shared ownership would keep value in communities. Ideally, it would reduce the extractive nature of capitalism as we know it. Committing to shared ownership means that, rather than picking a narrow few worthy of individual investment, financial institutions would evolve to support a collective ethos powered by community decision-making and capital that serves collective needs.

What Banks Can Do

Banks can do a much better job partnering with Black communities to co-design financial services that truly benefit those communities.

I am not arguing that financial institutions should parachute into disinvested communities with a pot of money and ask people to collectively decide what to do with it. Before anything happens outside the bank’s walls, decision-makers need to do their own work: clarify what they are trying to achieve, define non-negotiables, and set a clear container for community-led design and governance. Each bank should start small by partnering with local organizations that already have trust and on-the-ground infrastructure and then commit to supporting what emerges from the collective design process. Guardrails really matter here, not as control, but as clarity: they prevent the false promise of a blank check and make community partnerships durable. Banks can treat their approach like a structured pilot: test who can participate, remove preventable barriers, and build feedback loops before scaling. For example, the Wells Fargo Foundation partnered with Groundswell to launch a community-owned resilience hub in Atlanta. It shows how a financial institution, by investing in a locally anchored partner, pursued a shared design process that enabled collective action.

Banks can do a much better job partnering with Black communities to co-design financial services that truly benefit those communities. This approach can fit inside existing Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) lanes. CRA already distinguishes between “money in” (qualified investments, grants, deposits) and “skill in” (technical assistance and expertise). The update I’m proposing is simple: use tools to build governance capacity and guide community collaboration—support the collective success of people, not just their shiniest projects.

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Quinn Williams is the Director of Beneficial State Foundation’s Equitable Bank Standards. For support in implementing more equitable practices at your financial institution, contact our team.