South Carolina’s only black-owned bank received another sizable infusion, this time from one of the state’s largest energy suppliers.
Duke Energy said on Thursday that it had made a $ 5 million deposit with Columbia-based Optus Bank, saying the measure reflected its support for diverse, minority-owned businesses and individuals and low-income communities.
The transaction was completed in late December.
“It is an investment in people and communities that continue to face barriers to conventional funding and support,” said Mike Callahan, a gift from Duke’s South Carolina operations, in a prepared statement.
The Charlotte-based utility giant, which mainly serves the Upstate region, said the deposit is the largest it has made with a bank owned by Black in the United States and that it hopes to explore similar opportunities.
Optus President Paul Mitchell said the deal was made possible with the help of SC Minority Business Development Agency.
The growth of long-term deposits is critical for small banks.
“It gives you the freedom to help customers more, to provide long-term fixed rate loans at a lower cost because you now have the liquidity to support those loans and are not concerned with deposits going out when rates change,” CEO at Optus, Dominik Mjartan told The Post and Courier last year.
An agency’s financial institution estimated that almost 90% of its transactions are with companies belonging to minorities or women and low-income communities.
Duke’s commitment is its third high-profile corporate partnership for Optus in the past six months.
In August, PayPal pledged to park $ 50 million in long-term deposits “to do our part to help close the racial wealth gap”.
The next was Bank of America, which was already a major depositor for the small Midlands creditor. The Charlotte-based financial services giant said in September that it bought a 5 percent stake in Optus’s private parent under a new $ 1 billion racial equality pledge. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Optus was founded as Victory Savings Bank in 1921 by a group of African American community leaders with the aim of serving business owners and consumers who were excluded from the conventional financial system. Subsequently, it was renamed SC Community Bank and is among a growing number of creditors nationally designated as black-owned. Only 20 still exist.
Optus took on its current name in 2018. This translates to “choosing” in Latin.
Contact John McDermott at 843-937-5572 or follow him on Twitter at @byjohnmcdermott