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.