Climate First Bank CEO and founder Ken LaRoe talks with Green Builder Media ESG specialist Victoria Muharsky about values-based banking and why his Florida-chartered benefit corporation is structured differently from a traditional bank. He points to the Global Alliance for Banking on Values and peer institutions, and details the bank's digitized rooftop solar lending program, which has written roughly $110 million across about 2,400 loans since 2022 and recently expanded beyond Florida.
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Victoria Muharsky: I'm Victoria, ESG specialist at Green Builder Media, and today I'm here with Ken Lareau, CEO and founder of Climate First Bank. Let's go ahead and jump into the questions. So what differentiates Climate First Bank from traditional banks?
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Ken LaRoe: We are the only bank in the state of Florida that is a Florida chartered benefits corporation. And there's 20 something states in the country that have a benefits corporations, you know, statute or structure. But we are the only one in the state of Florida. That's a that's a bank. But what really distinguishes us is our mission and our values and our values proposition.
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Ken LaRoe: And there are very, very few value based banks in the actually in the world that really very few in America. And the term values based banks is a is a term that was coined by the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and it can encompass anything in the spectrum.
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Victoria Muharsky: We wanted to know why people should choose to bank with an entity like yours, where it is more value based, both environmentally and socially. Because I know there are some concerns out there about putting like environmental things above profit. So if you could talk on that a little bit, that'd be great.
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Ken LaRoe: Yes. I mean, I feel very strongly about it. And the beauty of it is the millennials and Gen Zs seem to get it. My generation definitely not. And Gen Xers probably half and half if you bank. Well, we've we've got a phrase that we got intellectual property protected. Changing finance to finance change and finance is a very, very powerful tool for change.
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Ken LaRoe: There's a handful of value based banks in America. The easiest place to go is a global alliance for banking on values and look at the numbers. I think there's 17 in North America now, and there are other banks that are deeply values based, that are not members or not members yet, because hopefully they will be. And I don't I don't mind naming them because to me, it's they're not competitors, they're, you know, compatriots or whatever.
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Ken LaRoe: And Androscoggin Bank and Maine is one. Alpine Bank in Colorado is one. Self-Help credit union is one. But then all the others are listed, you know, on the website, and it's it's us. It's, southern Bank and little Rock, Arkansas. Sunrise Bank in Minnesota. Beneficial state Bank in California. But they're out there. And if you want to know where your money sleeps at night and know it's not doing evil, then bank with the value space bank.
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Victoria Muharsky: Could you walk me through the process of securing a green loan for rooftop solar or carbon credits?
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Ken LaRoe: We don't necessarily do loans for carbon credits, and we're not in the in the carbon offset market. That's a it's a market. I hope that actually gets traction in America someday. But it's definitely going to take government intervention. But on the the rooftop solar, we are really the banking pioneers. And we started it back at the last bank in 2009.
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Ken LaRoe: And then we refined and refined and refined and refined. And now we have fully it's a fully digitized system that's all proprietary code that we wrote. So there's no other banks out there that have it. So you can actually go on our website and in three minutes fill out an application in 30s you have an answer with AI decisioning.
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Ken LaRoe: And in a day you have your documents. So for a consumer rooftop solar, it's that simple. On the commercial side, we're developing the proprietary software should be done this month where you can do the exact same thing. So we rolled the consumer rooftop solar out in May of 2022, and we've done about 110 million in in those loans since then.
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Ken LaRoe: And it's about 2400 loans I think. So it's a it's a real impact. And that's all been in Florida. We've now launched a nationwide on June 1st. So we've got nine states that are on our platform right now. And we're adding them as quickly as we can add them.