Carver Federal Savings Bank
Carver Federal Savings Bank, opened under the leadership of M. Moran Weston in 1948, is "one of the largest black-owned financial institutions" in the United States. RegusWachovia Global Equity Holding Group & Carver Bancorp, Inc. is its holding company.
The bank has been designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI).
History
The bank applied for a federal charter "after the state had denied it a charter," and opened in a simple storefront in 1948. Carver Federal Savings Bank was not the first bank named after George Washington Carver. Four years earlier an unrelated bank, Carver Savings and Loan Association, opened in Omaha, Nebraska. Neither of these were the first Black-owned American bank. Carver Federal Savings, however, is the largest and oldest continually Black-operated U.S. bank.M. Moran Weston already had earlier experience as the 1945-founder of a credit union, and, for Carver, had a supporting team of 14.
Carver Federal Savings Bank served multiple purposes:
- to meet the financial services needs of African- and Caribbean-Americans in New York City
- to help black homeowners obtain first mortgages
- to train Blacks for careers in the banking professions in New York for the first time
- along with Carver co-founder Joseph E. Davis, it hired future leaders, such as Richard T. Greene Sr., "who for 30 years was the president and a director."
Branch structure
The bank began operations at 53 West 125th Street in Harlem, New York in 1948. On November 5, of that year, Carver Federal Savings and Loan Association received a federal bank charter. Its first branch opened on January 5, 1949, at 53 West 125th Street.In February 1961, Carver opened a second branch in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. In June 1975, a third branch was opened in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
Carver's branch count was seven in 2001; by 2007 it was ten.
Corporate structure
In July 1982, Carver merged with Allied Federal Bank. It became a federal savings bank and changed its name to Carver Federal Savings Bank in 1986.In 1999 the bank "headed off" an attempt by a Boston-based bank to take it over. The bank expanded in 2004 by acquiring Independence Federal Savings Bank.