Banking for All

M&T BANK EXPANDS FINANCIAL ACCESS TO ETHNICALLY, RACIALLY DIVERSE COMMUNITIES IN DELAWARE

M&T Bank is expanding the services it provides to communities with high concentrations of ethnic and racial diversity by designating eight bank branches in Delaware as multicultural banking centers and contributing $100,000 to a loan program and other resources intended to help Latino and Black small-businesses owners thrive in Sussex County.

The newly designated multicultural banking centers will offer banking and other financial services in customers’ preferred languages and employ bankers from the community who understand the cultural nuances of the individuals and communities they serve. These eight branches are among the 36 branches M&T has in Delaware and the 118 multicultural banking centers the bank maintains throughout its Northeast and mid-Atlantic footprint.

In Sussex County, M&T is supporting the work of La Plaza, a nonprofit partnership designed to increase the economic stability, prosperity, and financial assets of Latinos through business and leadership development and personal financial coaching. La Plaza coordinates the expertise of its nonprofit partners in business and financial coaching, business plan development, micro-lending, and leadership development into a comprehensive bilingual package for the Latino community. To support the work of La Plaza, M&T is represented on its advisory board and contributed $100,000 toward:

• helping to fund the employment of La Plaza’s business/financial coach, who is based at La Esperanza Community Center in Georgetown, Del.;

• providing entrepreneurs access to a 12-week technical assistance and business plan program—developed by West End Neighborhood House—in English and Spanish; and,

• starting a loan pool administered by True Access Capital that will make loans of $2,500 to $10,000 to small businesses, the first of which will be to recent graduates of the entrepreneur assistance program.

The expansion of M&T’s multicultural banking centers and support of La Plaza service collaborative are part of the bank’s mission to be culturally fluent for all communities, especially as the state becomes more diverse. The number of Delawareans who identified as Hispanic or Latino increased from 8.2 percent in 2010 to 10.5 percent in 2020, according to the latest U.S. Census. That growth was especially strong in Sussex County, which saw a 58 percent increase in respondents identifying as Hispanic or Latino, according to census data.

“As this demographic shift accelerates throughout Delaware, our multicultural banking initiative allows us to continuously meet the changing needs of our communities,” said Nick Lambrow, M&T’s regional president for Delaware. “With our recent designation of new multicultural banking centers and support of services for the Latino and Black communities in Sussex County, we are demonstrating our clear intention to be the bank for all communities.”