Berkshire Bank’s Reevx Labs location in downtown Springfield. The storefront is not a branch but offers a range of financial services, with a focus on local entrepreneurs. Photo courtesy of Berkshire Bank
While the shift to digital banking has led lenders to close branches across New England, Berkshire Bank and Chase Bank are investing in their brick-and-mortar locations as tools to address financial issues and inequities highlighted by the pandemic.
Spaces like Berkshire’s Reevx Labs and Chase’s “community center” branches use office space to offer programs aimed at providing information and resources to underserved consumers and small businessesseveral i in attempts to have an impact on their finances and their communities.
“I’m not a banker, but I am a financial coach,” said Sabrina Correia, a vice president and community manager at Chase Bank’s new branch in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston. “I help people to discover what their needs are and to understand their goals, because when you understand your needs and your values, you realize that the goals that you have are actually life goals that have financial implications.”
New Spin on Existing Idea
This isn’t the first time banks have tried to reimagine their brick-and-mortar locations in Massachusetts.
Capital One began offering a different kind of banking experience 20 years ago when it opened its first Capital One Café in New York City. The cafés, in partnership with Peet’s Coffee, have ATMs but are not considered branches that take deposits. Instead, members of the public can visit the space and have discussions with Capital One staff about their financial needs – but only if they want. The cafes first arrived in Greater Boston in 2014, although Capital One closed several beginning before the COVID-19 pandemic in favor of an emphasis on digital banking.
Berkshire Bank’s Reevx Labs, which are also not branches, provide space for community members to use for events, meetings and other programs, while the bank focuses on reaching unbanked individuals and underserved small businesses. The first Reevx Lab opened on Washington Street in Roxbury in 2020, shortly before the start of the pandemic. Another location opened on Bridge Street in Springfield in June of this year.
Day-to-day activities at a Reevx Lab include financial wellness programs, still virtual at this point, said Ron Molina-Brantley, vice president, relationship manager and one of four employees at the Springfield location.
Reevx Labs also focus on assisting underserved small business owners, including people of color and members of the LGBTQ community. The Springfield office has just completed its first pop-up retail program with nine entrepreneurs, providing them with resources to help scale and build their business. Each business used the space for one week to sell products, and the location hosted a community event on Dec. 8 to showcase the businesses, giving the entrepreneurs opportunities to make connections within the community.
Chae Bank Mattapan branch manager Brian Samuel cuts the ribbon for the “community center” on Nov. 23, 2021, with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, to Samuel’s left, and community leaders in attendance. Photo by Lucy Kennedy | JPMorgan Chase/Courtesy
Ecosystem of Support
In addition to helping program participants as they build up their business, Molina-Brantley also connects them with financing options, noting that access to funding is a key challenge for underserved small business owners.
Funding options include the Futures Fund, a program offering lines of credit to help businesses struggling during the pandemic, which Berkshire Bank launched in 2020 with the LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce and the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts. Berkshire’s BEST Community Comeback program, launched in September, also includes dedicated funding for small businesses.
“Our whole bank, especially the lines of business that I’m working with, they’re very receptive to the referrals and the entrepreneurs and small businesses overall,” Molina-Brantley said. “Because what we believe is we need a team effort to support this whole ecosystem.”
The aim, Molina-Brantley said, is to give consumers and small businesses access to resources that treat their needs more holistically.
“One thing that I’m trying to do with Reevx Labs is to make the bank an ecosystem connector,” he said. “We’re trying to connect nonprofit organizations that are doing amazing things with the lab to provide a full wraparound service, so if a small business or entrepreneur needs assistance, as well as a consumer, they don’t have to go through five different locations to get that assistance.”
Berkshire Bank is still working on how to measure the success of Reevx Labs, Molina-Brantley said, but he added that building that ecosystem to connect consumers and entrepreneurs to other resources benefits the communities it serves.
Bridge to the Community
As part of a five-year, $30 billion commitment to address racial inequities, JPMorgan Chase has plans to open 16 branches in the U.S. known as “community centers,” including one in Mattapan that opened in July.
Chase community centers are full-service branches with teller lines and staff offering banking and lending products. Unlike normal branches, they are intended to provide a bridge between the bank’s current products and knowledge gained from community outreach, said Brian Samuel, branch manager of the Mattapan community center.
“Community centers are a work in progress, because we’re here to listen to the community and provide what the community needs,” Samuel said. “I think that’s what’s been lacking over the decades: someone actually continually listening to what their needs are and then providing solutions.”
The majority of Mattapan residents are people of color, and several immigrant communities have made the Boston neighborhood home, including those from Jamaica and Haiti.
The community center has a community room and pop-up space for small businesses. As with Reevx Labs, connections with nonprofits are part of the community outreach. Measuring the success of the branch will be less about traditional metrics and more about building community relationships, said Roxann Cooke, Chase’s managing director and regional director of banking.
The bank sees the community center as a necessary and long-term investment rather than focusing on short-term results, she said.
“As beautiful as this building is, as much as this building stands here, as much investment as we’ve put into the building, in communities like this where trust is a factor, they will not just come,” said Cooke, who lives in Mattapan. “We have to go and make those connections.”
Diane McLaughlin
Correia, the community manager, will have the lead role in making those connections. Rather than considering herself a banker, Correia describes herself as a “a community champion.”
In addition to connecting with community members and organizations, Correia has provided financial wellness workshops, both virtually with as many as 150 participants and recently through in-person events that with COVID protocols can hold up to 40 people.
While Citizens, Santander and Bank of America have Mattapan branches, the neighborhood does not have a community bank. At least one customer has referred to Chase, the country’s largest bank, as a community bank, Correia said.
“For somebody to say, ‘I’m happy to have a community bank like Chase’ speaks volumes to the work I’ve been doing with this space so that people feel the community,” Correia said. “The difference is the culture – we focus on people. This is where relationships are built.”
