Our Communities Can’t Afford to Wait – The Greenlined Banking Standards Call on Banks to Act on Racial Equity Now
Our continued Commitment to Racial Equity
As attacks on racial equity intensify under the current Administration, Greenlining’s Economic Equity team was forced to confront a critical question: how do we continue to advance racial equity for communities of color in a political environment that increasingly frames it as a threat? While the legal foundation for advancing equity has not fundamentally changed, executive orders, policy shifts, and disinformation are fostering fear and uncertainty. At the same time, the Trump Administration’s rhetoric around racial equity and DEI has created pressure for institutions – including banks and financial services providers – to step back rather than step forward.
At Greenlining, racial equity is at the core of what we do, and we believe it is more critical now than ever to be clear on our values, priorities, and commitments that center the most marginalized communities: Black, Indigenous, Immigrant, Latinx, Muslim, Arab, Trans-Queer, cis-women and the working class. We must cut through the noise, reject fear-based narratives, and boldly define how we move forward to demand and deliver racial and economic justice. The former can not be actualized without committing to and intentionally carving out processes and outcomes that center racial equity. And we are calling on the financial institutions to join us in this work.
Introducing Greenlined Banking Standards: A Blueprint for Financial Institutions
The Greenlined Banking Standards are an extension of our values and represent a strategic response to the growing threats our communities face — threats that dismantle social and financial safety (e.g. attacks on DEI, racial equity, consumer protections, CRA) and deepen racial and economic inequality. Co-designed with coalition members and allies, these standards establish a blueprint for financial institutions to ensure that banking products, services, and practices directly confront long-standing barriers to access and affordability — barriers that continue to block economic mobility and wealth-building for low-income communities and communities of color.
In this moment, it is essential that we affirm and protect racial equity together. By working in coalition, we can reinforce the legality and urgency of embedding racial equity into financial systems — not only as a matter of principle, but as a necessary step to redress the harms of redlining and build a more just economy.
Why the Greenlined Banking Standards?
Greenlined Banking Standards are rooted in decades of advocacy and informed by the expertise of community-based organizations in the Greenlining Coalition. These standards are designed to deliver measurable, meaningful benefits to low-income communities and communities of color. Our focus has always been about equitable outcomes – focusing on procedural and distributional equity to get to transformative systems change.
Over the last 30 years, Greenlining has successfully directed billions in investments in low-income communities and communities of color through Community Benefit Agreements. The Greenlined Banking Standards are informed by this work and will continue to drive investments into our communities by honing in on areas of expertise held within our team and our coalition: home lending, small business, community development, consumer centered products, climate finance, equity-centered practices, and community engagement. Implementing these standards within these key areas will ensure banks can respond to community priorities and create tangible racial equity outcomes by delivering affordable and inclusive products, practices, and services in communities that have been historically underserved by financial institutions.
The Greenlined Banking Standards provide banks with clear and achievable goals within the priority areas listed above, supporting efforts to advance racial equity while strengthening community reinvestment practices. While grounded in the framework of the Community Reinvestment Act, our approach goes further by identifying opportunities for banks to expand their impact, particularly through mobilizing private capital in formerly redlined communities. By doing so, banks can align with community priorities, demonstrate leadership in equity, and build lasting community trust.
Moving Forward
In October, we invited banks to engage with us on the Greenlined Banking Standards to discuss how Greenlined Banking Standards can be successfully implemented, hear various perspectives, identify areas where alignment is possible, and ensure the standards reflect both community priorities and the realities banks face in delivering and responding to these priorities.
As we gear up to launch the standards in early 2026, we are calling on banks to work with us as collaborative partners to implement the Greenlined Banking Standards. We believe that by fostering dialogue grounded in transparency, accountability, and reciprocity, we can co-create a financial system where equity is embedded in its practices and services — and where resources generated result in direct, meaningful, and measurable benefits for the communities banks serve. In order to actualize the former, banks will need to uphold data transparency, commitment to dialogue, and willingness to make progress on racial equity goals.
This commitment to intentional, sustained partnership with banks is essential to drive transformative investments that fuel generational wealth and economic opportunity in order to close the racial wealth gap.
At Greenlining, we know that intentional commitment to racial equity is the only way we can address the long lasting effects of redlining and its devastating manifestations: perpetual disinvestments, economic inequality, and widening disparities in wealth by race. The Greenlined Banking Standards will be one of the many tools we use at Greenlining to address the root causes of redlining while also responding to the current threats imposed by our current administration.
We call on our partners and community members to join us in 2026 as we roll out our standards with banks and demand transparency, accountability, and commitment to serving the financial needs of low-income communities and communities of color from our economic system.
