New Study Shows Bank of America Worst on Locating Bank Branches in Majority Minority Neighborhoods, Lending More Mortgages to Whites than African Americans, Latinos

As lawmakers ramp up scrutiny of the banking industry for predatory and abusive lending practices, a new report released today finds Bank of America is worst on locating bank branches in minority neighborhoods and lending more mortgages to whites than African Americans or Latinos. In four of six cities, Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods and was twice as likely to lend to white mortgage applicants than to African American mortgage applicants in Detroit and Chicago, the study shows.

“It’s simply unacceptable that Bank of America — the biggest bank in the country — is failing to ensure access to banking services and fair mortgage loans for entire communities of color,” said William McNary, Co-Director of Citizen Action Illinois. “If the bank with the most branches won’t do the right thing for our neighborhoods, who will?”

The report, issued by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), examined Bank of America’s pattern of bank branches against its top two competitors in Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis — cities ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau among the top-ten most-racially segregated in the country. Despite having more than double the number of bank branches of its nearest competitor nationally — with more than 5,700 bank branches, Bank of America has five times as many branches as Citibank and two times as many branches as JPMorgan Chase — Bank of America performed worst overall in locating branches in majority minority communities in the cities analyzed in the report.

Key findings of the study, entitled “Shut Out of The American Dream: How Bank of America is Systematically Underserving Communities of Color and Harming Low-Income Families with Questionable Practices,” include:

– Bank of America is overall less likely to locate bank branches in majority minority communities than its top competitors in each market: — Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in majority minority communities in 4 of the 6 cities analyzed. — Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in African American communities in 4 of the 6 cities analyzed. — Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in Latino communities in half the cities with Latino populations large enough to be analyzed. — Bank of America fails to locate bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods regardless of the proportion of area residents who are minority: — In Philadelphia — where nearly one-fifth of the area’s residents live in majority minority communities — Bank of America has located only 5 percent of its bank branches in majority minority communities. — In the African American communities that comprise 14 percent of Philadelphia’s population, Bank of America has located only 3 percent of its bank branches. — In Chicago, Bank of America has 12 times more bank branches in neighborhoods with the fewest minority residents than in neighborhoods with the most minority residents. — In Chicago neighborhoods with the highest number of white residents, the ratio of residents to bank branches is an average of only 11,204 residents per bank branch compared to 138,930 residents per branch in the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of African Americans. — Bank of America lends more mortgages to whites than to African Americans and Latinos: — Bank of America is more likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower than for an African American in all the cities examined. — In Detroit and Chicago, Bank of America was more than twice as likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower as for an African American borrower. Bank of America was also more than twice as likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower as for a Latino borrower in Chicago. — In New York, Bank of America was nearly one and a half times as likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower as for an African American borrower.

Bank of America is the largest bank in the United States, controlling one in five credit cards and ten percent of all bank deposits — the maximum amount permitted by the Federal Reserve. Nationally, Bank of America has recently come under fire for its record of charging consumers some of the highest fees and interest rates in the nation — the bank collected more than $22.4 billion from penalty and service fees in 2006 alone. In Chicago, Bank of America’s acquisition in September of LaSalle Bank has raised concerns among community organizations and elected leaders at the local, state, and national levels, including a loss of 10,500 jobs and more than $780 million in tax and other revenue from the area projected by the Anderson Economic Group.

“The more we look at the practices of the biggest banks, the worse things we uncover,” said Stephen Lerner, Assistant to the President, SEIU. “Here’s a bank that is already using its size and market dominance to drive up fees and interest rates on working people — and now it’s trying to grow even bigger. If a bank is going to be this big and this powerful, it should have responsibilities to the communities in which it operates.”

For more information and to download a copy of the report visit www.bankofamericabadforamerica.org/ .

Bank of America Bad for America is a project of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the fastest-growing labor union in North America with 1.9 million members nationwide. We are working to hold big banks accountable to working families and our communities.
Service Employees International Union”*

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