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Dr. Shojai: Hey, it’s Dr. Pedram Shojai, founder of well.org. I want to introduce you
to a couple of heroes right now. Peter and Bill are at New Resource Bank. These guys
lend money to the good guys. What we’re about is about voting with your dollars, and
these guys are putting their money where their mouth is. They’re helping the world become
a better place with what they’re doing with their bank. If you’re investing in a bank
that’s not helping the world, you might want to reconsider. I highly recommend New
Resource Bank. Check it out. I think you’re going to like these guys.
Male: The bank is really founded on making an impact. A small bank by itself amongst
a thousand other banks can’t make a big impact, but financing those companies that
do make a big impact is what we’re trying to do.
Bill: I’m Bill Peterson, and I’m the chief credit officer at New Resource Bank.
Peter: My name is Peter Pliska. I’m the head of the Asset-Based Lending Department
at New Resource Bank. Male: It started with Peter Liu and then Bob
Epstein and I think [Bill Wolford 00:00:58], some of the initial brains behind it, initial
investors, and I think it took off, and it exploded dramatically with Peter Liu, who
has a long background in clean tech. He wanted a bank like Silicon Valley Bank was focused
on just technology. He designed New Resource Bank just to be designed at green companies.
He wanted to differentiate that everything we did, even though we’re a small bank amongst
thousands, that what we would invest in, deposits or loans or whatever, would go to companies
that really impacted our mission. Male: There is a segment of the population,
and it’s a growing segment, that has said, “I want what’s healthy. I want what’s
produced locally. I want something that I know is going to be better and hopefully taste
better as well. I’m willing to pay whether it’s a premium, a little more, or I’m
simply willing to buy and give its equal because it’s better for me.” That niche is where
the whole organic and sustainably-minded companies are tapping into.
One of the great things in this day and age with the open bank is technology because most
of our customers don’t walk into the bank every day, even every week or month. Really,
most of the banking is done online. We have the same services that every other bank in
this day and age has in terms of being able to open accounts online, in terms of being
able to process deposits through the mail or electronically. The technology has really
helped us become more than just a bank when we can service our 5-mile radius around us.
In fact, we’ve got customers all over the world that have heard about us, seen us online,
and seen our website, and really liked what we do and either deposited or invested with
the bank. The challenges that I see for our bank, one
is certainly environment. We’ve always got to be concerned with changing technology,
with regulatory conditions, things like, as you mentioned in solar, the rebate structure
that’s constantly changing. There are external things that we’ve always got to be apprised
of. Male: The key is to try and take the winners
in the segment. It’s no different than any other business segment. As the opportunity
increases, there are going to be winners and losers. There are going to be people that
jump on the bandwagon. There are going to be entrepreneurs that have a great idea but
aren’t able to execute like in any other business. Where we can help is to try and
make more winners than losers and really support and advocate in those areas that we think
are going to have a real impact. We think that there is a way to do banking
that’s much more long term, that’s much more conscientious about who we’re lending
to. While we may be able to lend to a company that all they care about is the profit and
they aren’t worried about the impacts, that’s not the kind of bank we want to be. Part of
conscious capitalism is considering stakeholders. It’s not just about the shareholders. That’s
one of the reasons that we’re a B-corp as well, a benefit corporation, which are companies
that are really dedicated to triple bottom line and thinking beyond just the profit motive
for any corporation. Male: A lot of the companies, they want to
be part of this network of like-minded companies, and it can be not only philosophically, “We
like what you’re doing and we want to be into green space [inaudible 00:04:33].”
It goes beyond the community of triple bottom line thinking [inaudible 00:04:39]. Finally,
it’s about growth. We look at where we are and where we want to go. We got to reach critical
mass where we want to be first regional player in terms of banking and then hopefully, we’d
like to be a national player. It’s usually the small banks that really
are community-minded. They’re all struggling with slow money, but I’ll think about slow
money as being community, trying to take it like they’re an opportunity maybe in Minnesota
for the [inaudible 00:05:06], but they could go national, regional and national. That’s
a challenge, would be [inaudible 00:05:12], maybe open up [a couple of deals 00:05:15]
on the place and then maybe raise more capital. There’s a lot of different strategies that
we have in place, but our focus right now is just to use what we have, employ it in
the right way, the free way. Male: [inaudible 00:05:33]