B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In order to achieve certification, a company must:

1. Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing a risk review.

2. Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.

3. Exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.

As they are required to undergo the verification process every three years in order to recertify, B Corps are by definition also focused on continuous improvement, leading to their long-term resiliency. B Corp Certification is holistic, not exclusively focused on a single social or environmental issue. Recertification confirms these standards continue to be met on an ongoing basis.

Start by looking at your bank’s publicly available CRA rating. The CRA legislation was passed in 1977 to prevent the practice of redlining and to minimize systemic financial exclusion.

You can read more about CRA at: https://www.frbatlanta.org and find the CRA rating of your bank or any bank in the USA at: https://www.ffiec.gov.

In December 2018 Spring Bank received the highest available CRA rating from the FDIC – “Outstanding.”

Certified B Corporations are businesses that balance purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. The B Corp community of companies are driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good. All B Corps are given a score by the independent third-party B-Lab. You can find B Corps and their scores at: https://bcorporation.net/directory.

Spring Bank is New York’s first B Corp Bank with a current rating of 136.2. You can read details about our score here. We are proud to have received the designation of “Best for the World” in 2021 in two categories: Customers and Governance. This means that we are amongst the top 10% of B Corps in our ratings in these categories.