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Banking for good with Climate First Bank Founder and Chairman, Ken LaRoe
Ken LaRoe is the Founder and Chairman of Climate First Bank, the fastest growing new bank in the United States.
With approximately 600 shareholders, Ken and his team have grown Climate First Bank in only three years to around $100 million in capital and over $750 million in loans. Specializing in (non-predatory) residential solar lending, especially to the middle class, Climate First Bank is also a leader in business lending to mission-driven businesses and regenerative land stewardship projects. Climate First Bank, named by Ken’s wife, Dr. Cindy LaRoe, is being positioned for an initial public offering (IPO) sometime in 2025 or 2026 in order to grow its capital base more quickly and further scale-up its impact in the environmental and social stewardship arenas.
Inspired by Yvonne Chouinard’s seminal book Let My People Go Surfing, Ken LaRoe is a change-maker in the impact finance space, and has established Climate First Bank as a Certified B-Corp, a 1% for the Planet member, a legal Public Benefits Corporation, a member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and a member in the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative.
According to Ken, “where you bank arguably has more impact on your carbon footprint than anything else you do.” A serial banking entrepreneur, Ken LaRoe has launched three banks, two of which he exited and one of which, Climate First Bank, he’s rapidly growing for maximum environmental and social benefit in the United States and Beyond. Founded a few years ago in Florida (and now scaling nation-wide after “graduating” its initial de novo period with the Federal regulators), Climate First Bank is the only Benefits Corporation bank in Florida, and is part of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values.
About Ken LaRoe
Ken LaRoe is an award-winning sustainability professional and internationally recognized leader in the field of ethical banking who has dedicated his life to environmental activism and building businesses.
After successfully launching, scaling and exiting two banks in Central Florida, LaRoe opened Climate First Bank, on June 1, 2021, the world’s first FDIC-insured digital community bank founded to combat the climate crisis. In just three years, Climate First Bank has grown to over $750M in assets, has provided access to solar power to more than 2,000 households, and has raised $79M in capital, making it one of the fastest growing banks in the United States.
Ken also personally lives out his bank’s mission of environmental sustainability. As a committed environmentalist, he served as the chairman of Preserve Lake, a political action committee that passed a bond referendum for $36 million to purchase public land. He later served the Lake County Commission as Chairman of the Public Lands Acquisition Advisory Committee and was a founding member of the North American Chapter of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV). He also served on the Board of Directors of the GABV from 2014 to 2016. In 2016 and again in 2024, LaRoe was honored with the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® award.
Resources & Related Episodes
- Facebook: @climatefirstbank
- Instagram: @climatefirstbank
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/climate-first-bank/
- YouTube: @climatefirstbank
- Linked In: Ken LaRoe
- www.climatefirstbank.com
Episode 163 – Jared Meyers, Founder & CEO, Legacy Vacation Resorts
Ep. 148 – Jorge Fontanez, CEO, B-Lab USA & Canada
Ep. 141 – Nathan Stuck, CEO, Profitable Purpose Consulting
Ep. 138 – Tom Chi, Founder & CEO, At One Ventures
Ep. 85 – Kate Williams, CEO, 1% for the Planet
Transcript
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry,
and today we’re visiting with Ken LaRoe, the founder and chairman of Climate First Bank.
Hi Ken, how are you doing? Excellent, and you? Doing great, and so excited to chat with you
today, especially given the amazing work and impact you and your colleagues are having with
Climate First Bank. It’s just an extraordinary story. It’s really been a journey and I must say
a fulfilling journey and a bucket list dream come true that I didn’t really know I had in my
bucket. Oh wonderful, yeah that’s great. Ken LaRoe is an award-winning sustainability professional
and internationally recognized leader in the field of ethical banking who has dedicated his
life to environmental activism and building businesses. After successfully launching,
scaling and exiting two banks in central Florida, Ken opened Climate First Bank on June 1st,
2021. The world’s first FDIC insured digital community bank founded to combat the climate crisis.
In just three years, Climate First Bank has grown to over $700 million in assets, has provided
access to solar power to more than 2,000 households, and has raised around $80 million in capital,
making it one of the fastest growing banks in the United States. Ken also personally lives
out his bank’s mission of environmental sustainability. As a committed environmentalist,
he served as the chairman of Preserve Lake, a political action committee that passed a bond
referendum for $36 million to purchase public land. He later served the Lake County Commission
as chairman of the Public Lands Acquisition Advisory Committee and was a founding member
of the North American chapter of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, which I’m really
excited to talk about. He also served on the board of directors of the Global Alliance Banking
on Values from 2014 to 2016, and again in 2024. Excuse me, he served on the board of directors
of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values from 2014 to 2016, and in both 2016 and again in 2024,
Ken was awarded the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Wow, this is quite an amazing
summary, Ken, of your CV, and rare, in my experience anyway, that we’ll have such an
accomplished banker doing also so much in the arena of environmental stewardship and also now,
of course, through Climate First Bank, you are deploying a whole lot of capital right into solutions.
Can you tell us, to give folks an impression of what’s different and what’s happening with
Climate First Bank, can you tell us a bit about what’s going on with the company?
Sure. As you know, Aaron, we’ve talked before, this is the third bank I’ve done, the first one
I started in 99 and sold in 06, and it was just a standard Florida, started up, scale it, exit,
make a bunch of people a bunch of money. The second one was a result of, after I sold that bank and
working out my non-compete period, my wife and I got a mini motorhome and we circumnavigated the
country, and my brother gave me Evanchinard’s autobiography, let my people go surfing,
and Evanchinard is the founder of Patagonia, and I thought, oh my god, this is it, this is the
answer to my questions and what was bugging me at the time of what do I do with the rest of my life
instead of just making a bunch of people. That was the genesis of First Green Bank.
So that was in, we opened in 2009, right at the trough of the recession, and there really wasn’t
value-space banking movement per se, there was a few little smatterings around the globe,
so it was really a learning journey, and it was a fabulous learning journey for me and my folks.
We went through the recession and all the economic meltdown, all the while learning a lot of great
stuff, and my relationship with the Global Alliance for Banking Values was a huge help,
and that’s the base, and we pioneered the first, I think it was the first in the country,
residential solar loan program back in 2009, and we kept refining and refining and refining.
We sold that bank in 2018, I did another cross-country trip, a whole bunch of soul searching,
basically, am I too old? That was what I wrestled with every day, I’m just too old, this is really
hard, and then my wife and my soulmate, Dr. Cindy LaRue, convinced me, and it was convincing,
a lot of arm twisting, look, you’ve got it in, you’ve got unfinished business, you need to do this,
you need to do another bank, and you need to do it, no compromise in your face,
and starting with the name, and it needs to be the Climate First Bank, and she came up with the
name, so that was the most prescient business decision we made, because every single day it
plays out, you know, every single day we get somebody that says, I’m moving my banking over to you,
I’ve been driving by your sign every day for six months, I’m moving all my stuff from Bank of
America, because you believe what I believe, and conversely, it’s like every day somebody says,
I’m not going to come bank with you with all that woke shit you guys are doing, and we say fine,
there’s, you know, plenty of people out there that value it, or we get the guy that says,
you know, all that climate stuff, that’s a hoax, but I’m banking with you anyway,
because I love your service, and that’s probably the best scenario we could hope for, because
a big part of our mission is to influence and educate, or educate and influence,
whichever way you want to look at it. Beautiful. Well, I’m really thrilled, Ken, that we’ve
connected here summer of 2024, because as I understand it, you guys have just hit a very
significant milestone, which means you’re about to reach a whole lot more people educating,
influencing, and deploying a whole lot more capital. Can you walk us through a little bit,
that process with the federal regulators, and what that means now that you’re out of the DeNovo
period? Yes, and honestly, before I did my first bank, I didn’t know what DeNovo meant,
and so I had to look it up, and it means what comes before, or something like that,
and so there’s a regulatory period of heightened scrutiny the last three years after the day you
open. So we’ve been, we’ve made it through there. June 1 was the date. The federal regulators didn’t
want us expanding outside the state of Florida until we got through with DeNovo, so
immediately upon getting out, we’ve expanded our residential solar program into eight other
states than Florida, and now we’re going through the process of licensing in the other states and
all that. The ultimate goal is to be in all 50 states by the end of this year with our residential
solar product and our business solar product, which is fully digitized. Anybody can go online
and in three minutes fill out an application and 30 seconds have a credit decision.
We have been banking customers nationwide the whole time through our online account opening
and online banking, and we have customers in 49 states and in three countries now,
Puerto Rico, France, and England, so it’s been kind of amazing in the digital
space. We’ve had to write all our own proprietary code because small banks, community banks,
are beholden to the core processing system that we have to buy and then any API that’ll
allegedly talk to it, and I say allegedly because they never do very well. So I kind of boast that
our online banking is almost as good as a Capital One experience, not to put in a plug for our
competitors, but we’re getting better and we will get there, and we joke that our service is
almost as good as Ritz Carlton, but we hope to pass them someday. So it’s all part of the learning
journey, if you will. I absolutely love it. The personable demeanor by which you
represent the company as founder and chairman is so delightful and so authentic. I’ve had the
pleasure of interacting with some of your other team as well over the last several weeks, and
folks are genuinely really friendly and helpful. Some of my other friends and colleagues in the
world of banking, I wouldn’t say necessarily carry that same level of joy and simpatico,
and that’s amazing, right? That’s just an amazing thing to experience it with our banking partners.
Well, thank you for that, but I think a lot of it is just getting old. The wisdom thing does
increase with age. I’m quite convinced, at least I’ve experienced it. My dad told me that it would,
and it’s like, thank God. I thought we had a good culture in my last bank, but that was only
because I didn’t know what good culture was, and this bank has defined good culture. Oh my gosh,
it’s, I think you hit the nail on the head. You said you’ve had exchanges with some of my co-workers,
and they’re amazing. I mean, they are amazing. I get accolades all the time. In our last staff
meeting, I think our last one or the one before, I’d just gotten like four accolades that week,
and I told my team, I said, you guys are amazing. We haven’t even done formal customer service
training in this bank, yet you all get it somewhat, somehow intuitively, and they really,
really do. And when we screw up, it’s just like everybody owns it. It’s just amazing,
and I don’t know entirely what has caused it. It’s a lot of my same team that was with me
that the last bank has rejoined. Is it the 30-year overnight sensation or the three times the charm
or what? But I know a lot of it is the values proposition. Almost every new person that has
joined us has stated in the interview that the reason they’re there is because of our values
proposition. That’s so exciting. One of the things I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about,
and in fact is one of the threads in our forthcoming book, is this idea that the notion
of competitive advantage is really transforming before our very eyes. Those of us living and
working right now in these times as environmental stewardship and social responsibility factor
more and more into our business decisions, into our consumer purchasing decisions.
And it seems to me that what you’re doing at Climate First Bank exemplifies just that. And
I’m not surprised to hear what you’re describing with respect to the value proposition and holy
smokes. You say you’re busy and have a lot going on these past few years, but I imagine
things are really about to skyrocket for you guys given the national scope now and
that this is probably going to catch on in a really big way, word of mouth and otherwise.
What are you anticipating as you’re looking out ahead over the coming quarters and next few years?
The growth trajectory really drives a lot and in banking it’s a highly regulated industry and
a highly regulated and just highly regulated. The easy metric to think about is you can only
grow your total assets 10 times your capital. So we’re, as of today, we’re 730 million in assets.
We raised, as you pointed out, 79 million initially. So you can see we’re right at that 10 times.
The worst thing that could happen would be that we have to slow down and constrain growth, especially
when the growth is in such cool things as solar renewable energy finance, building energy retrofits,
ESOP banking. We do a lot of ESOP banking. All the stuff that we’re really making an impact in,
it would just be a shame to have to slow it down. So we’re in another capital raise right now.
I really would like to raise 50 million. We’ve been at it seven weeks and have
a little shy of 7 million in signed commitments or signed subscription agreements.
So about a million dollars a week, it’s not bad, but we do need to try to raise as much as possible.
And then our plan is to go public in 2025 or 2026. That’s a multifaceted logic stream behind that,
not the least of which is the ability to raise more capital because it’s all a capital driven thing.
But if we are publicly traded, it would give us a larger platform or larger
bully pulpit, if you will. Size is a big, big important factor.
So that’s kind of the future. While of course maintaining the highest level of safety and
soundness we can maintain, it would really gut our values proposition if we didn’t perform at
a high financial level, including safety and soundness. I’ve got to ask you a little bit of a
geeky question about safety and soundness in a few minutes. I’m going to wait, though,
and first ask, you mentioned the ESOP banking, which is the employee stock ownership plans
that many companies are now utilizing to further incentivize and share the wealth with their teams.
And of course, the bank is a certified B Corp and is also part of the 1% for the planet ecosystem.
And I want to talk a little more about what that means in terms of the global network and
landscape. But I’m really curious with respect to the commitments you’ve made, above and beyond
maximizing profit. What does that look like for you as you’re laying the groundwork and
preparing for an IPO? Is it something that’s really difficult to navigate? Is it fairly
straightforward? That’s a really, really good question. We’re also a Florida Legal Benefits
Corporation, Public Benefits Corporation. We are the only bank in the state that is
in one of the few in the country, and most states now have the public benefit status.
But we think, and our investment banker thinks, that being certified by third party
certifiers like B Labs, 1% for the planet, all of the various vetting processes we’ve gone through,
jeet and global lines for banking on values, will actually help when we go public. That there’s
enough demand out there and enough generational cohort change to drive a better valuation because
of it. And I believe it in my heart of hearts, but then I’ve gotten all this verification
through our investment bankers and stuff. And there are some, a couple of
B Corp, Benefit Corps that have gone public, and they’re doing very well, and they’re doing
very well, and they did very well in their IPO. Did that answer your question? Was that
responsible? Yeah, yeah. It definitely answers part of it, and it sort of, I think, implicitly
answers the other part, which was I was wondering if you had to jump through certain hoops or somehow
bridge the gap when Wall Street in general, as I understand it, is looking primarily and
often exclusively for maximized profits, right? How does that get reconciled as you’re shifting
toward triple bottom line and social and environmental performance in addition to the
financial performance? Well, I think the solution to that or the answer to that is
we believe that we don’t have to sacrifice financial performance to do good, and I personally
am not, that’s not acceptable to me personally. I know almost all of our shareholders,
we have 580-something shareholders, they are friends and family. If they weren’t friends when
they invested, they’d frequently become friends, and I have a responsibility to them to maximize
their return and to go way beyond doing no harm. It’s not just a function of doing no harm, it’s
a function of actually doing good in the world, however that is defined. I believe that if we
don’t put financial performance on the board that’s highest in class, it diminishes everything.
I mean it diminishes, people can take shots at you then, and if you look back at the
Milton Friedman mentality of shareholder primacy, I mean I always used to think, well,
he’s just a bad guy, he’s wrong-headed, he was a bad guy, it’s all wrong, but
the more I think about it, maybe that’s not the case. At the time he was
postulating that thesis, which became the Chicago School and all that, I mean it was a period of
unprecedented natural resources, a period of, I mean there was no labor shortage,
but there were capital constraints, so maybe he was just a product of his time, maybe he was
a product of that situation, but we’re in a space now between stories. The old system is done,
but it hasn’t manifested in what the new economy is quite yet, right? So we can
get back from a distance and say, well, I don’t know where we’re headed, but I know the road we
should take. I’m really getting off track of what you asked me, but I think the solution
to the Wall Street question is we’re going to put big numbers on the board anyway, you know,
there’s no margin without the mission in my mind, and then the margin is better with the mission.
Yeah, that’s beautiful, and to me reinforces this notion of a dramatically shifting competitive
advantage overall, and I love the background and the political economy in all of this with
Milton Friedman and obviously several generations before him, Adam Smith, right, who was a moral
philosopher of all things and sort of took for granted several key social and philosophical
imperatives that would say we’re treating each other well and we’re treating our planet well
by implication. And yeah, now that we’re at a point in the development of the global economy and
here in the United States where we’ve got to include a lot of other variables and factors to
compete well and to perform well, it gives me great hope that where we’re headed, although it might
be a bit of a bumpy road, where we’re headed helps to harmonize the interests of financial
performance, environmental performance, social performance, and that perhaps in a number of
years or hopefully a couple of short decades, you know, we’ll look back and say, wow, it’s wild
that the previous several generations saw those three things as being so at odds with one another
when in fact, when this thing’s well done, they all go really well together.
Absolutely, 100%. It’s all part of the same giant organism. Should be, anyway.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I got to ask this geeky question. I grew up in a family. My parents
are entrepreneurial and had a mortgage banking company. And so I had some idea of
underwriting requirements and so forth. And I’m really curious, what kind of paper are you guys
writing? Is your underwriting pretty conservative? Are you kind of middle of the road, especially
if you’re working with consumers, homeowners, helping them with solar? Are they very tight
underwriting criteria or what does that look like?
I would say if you had to put it on a continuum, it would be pretty conservative. And
some of that is a function that, well, we’re bankers and we’re traditionally trained in
traditional underwriting, but it’s part of that whole thing of we’re in the space between stories
that it was always understood that while you get a credit score, you look at debt to income and
you make a decision, this is on the consumer side. But then low to moderate income households
wouldn’t qualify. And so therefore, it locks out just a huge section of the population from
even being able to get ahead. And again, as part of our learning journey, we’ve started to learn
through the help of some dear friends like Martin Eakes at Self Help Credit Union or
Cat Taylor at Beneficial State Bank, that there are other metrics, there are other ways to look
at things and still have prudent and sound underwriting. And so we are working on that
diligently now. We kind of joke amongst ourselves that we do solar for the middle class really,
really well. If you’re middle to upper income, we got you. And that’s the easy underwriting.
We don’t do solar for a low to moderate income. Well, at all, and that’s the demographic that
needs it the most. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Greenhouse Cash Reduction Fund
should go a long way to solving that. And we hope to be part of that. But it’s such things as
we’ll get an application that’ll have very good credit scores with the three traditional credit
rating agencies. And then a completely wonky debt to income ratio. It wouldn’t work. It just
defies the laws of physics. Well, how could somebody have an 800 credit score but have a 90%
debt to income? They couldn’t survive financially. Well, what it is is and then you look at their
surname and it’s Latin or it’s Middle Eastern or whatever. And you go, wait a minute, something’s
going on here. It’s thematic. It’s iterative. It’s Latin’s surname, it’s Latin’s surname,
it’s Latin’s surname. What’s going on? Well, one thing a lot of immigrants, first generation
immigrants, don’t trust the government. They don’t trust banks. They’ve got a W2 income
somewhere, but then they got a side hustle and they’re not putting that side hustle on that
application. They may be paying taxes on it or whatever, but they’re not putting it down on
that application because they don’t trust the banks. They don’t have an 80% debt to income ratio.
It’s really 30% or whatever. And the default rate on the low to moderate income community is very,
very low. Historically, it was always thought to be very, very high. Gosh, I’m getting off on
a tangent again and I geek out on this stuff. So we have very, very good credit quality and we
have it all of my banks and I think that’s a function of being fastidious and having systems
and policies and procedures in place and following them and all of that. Just boring,
blocking and tackling business stuff, but we’re not so high bound that we won’t look at what it takes
to accomplish our objectives from a mission perspective either. Yeah, it’s so interesting.
I want to ask one other sort of geeky question and then we can move on to some other maybe more
exciting topics, but I’m curious, do you guys hold on to all of the loans you originate or do
you move some of them to the secondary markets? What does that look like for you guys? We do
residential lending and it’s pretty much plain.
collect for you guys. We do residential lending and it’s pretty much plain vanilla residential.
We do portfolios, some of those, but we also sell some of those in the secondary market.
In the solar space, there’s a gigantic, it’s kind of constrained right now, but a gigantic
secondary market that the FinTechs have been selling those loans into for a number of years now.
But we were always told it takes tranches of at least $100 million. We have found that we can easily
sell $2 million tranches or $3 million and we’ve sold some of our solar loans off to other community
banks, mostly CDFI banks. So the answer is yes, we do sell some off. We do participate some larger
loans and participate out and participate in, but the vast majority we keep on the portfolio.
Interesting. And maybe as a way to transition toward some of the emerging indicators around
this new economy that we’re moving toward, how do you foresee climate related and specifically
carbon market related signals playing into your solar lending in the coming years? Is that
something you’re starting to anticipate? Trying to anticipate. As you know, the carbon markets
in the U.S. just hasn’t become what it should be. And especially when you look at it in the context
of the rest of the world, especially Europe. I mean, we’re staying on top of it and we
really hope it happens, but there’s nothing at this point that it plays into our strategy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. Well, you know, we’ve had on the podcast
other really notable leaders like our mutual friend, Kate Williams, who’s CEO of 1% for the
planet. And of course, Jorge Fonteniz, who’s the CEO of B Lab for the United States and Canada.
And one of the things I’m so excited about is tracking the growth and development of those
two ecosystems, which now encompass many thousands of companies and similarly several
thousand nonprofits as well, NGOs. How are those ecosystems as they’re developing and
expanding and growing and those companies are commanding more and more market share in their
respective industries? Are you seeing a lot of them interested in banking with you? And is
there potentially a lot of synergy there that will kick in over the next few years?
I think it will grow significantly. You’ve probably experienced the same thing I do. It’s
kind of shocking to find out or to see people that don’t know what the B Corp logo, the circle
with the B it means or what 1% for the planet means. And I’m thinking, huh, it’s everywhere,
at least the B Labs certifications everywhere on product labels and everything. But and then when
you tell people that don’t know, they’re like, hmm, okay, well, that’s kind of interesting, whether
they’re, you know, believers or not. But we think it’s, and as it becomes more and more understood
that where you bank has more impact on your carbon footprint than almost anything else you do,
that’s not widely understood yet either. It’s kind of like, you know, soil and soil health and the
micro organisms that and how they impact the human organism. It’s all that stuff that’s just
barely we’re barely starting to scratch the surface. As more and more people realize what
a big impact their banking is, I think they’ll they’ll be moving to value space banks a lot more.
In fact, B Labs is going to start giving points for banking with a value space bank.
And I think 1% for the planet is going to also give credits for that like they give credits
for labor if you do in kind, you know, contributions or whatever. And we do a lot of that for our 1%
membership. We’ve been involved with Tampa Bay Watch, which is a really cool nonprofit in the
Tampa Bay area. And a lot of our team has gone out and done oyster, you know, reclamation projects
and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, with the help of B Labs and 1% for the planet,
I think it will even accelerate. Yeah, it’s so exciting to think about these positive feedback
loops. You know, I think those of us who have been looking at these systemic risks and what many
refer to as the poly crisis, we can identify a whole bunch of negative feedback loops. And what
excites me really almost beyond words is the emergence of these positive feedback loops. And,
you know, this work you’re doing as a leader in the values based banking arena is so
tremendous. And I’m hoping, can you explain for us what the global alliance for banking on values
is and does? And it seems like to me that’s one of the things more and more of us ought to be aware
of. Well, it certainly is a shining light, that’s for sure. The ironic thing was when I first started
First Green Bank, you know, came up with the concept, it was about 2007. And I thought, well,
what can a bank do? You know, and so I just googled green banks and two banks popped up. One was
New Resource Bank in San Francisco, which is now amalgamated, another great value space bank.
And Triotus Bank in the Netherlands. And so I just reached out, researched the CEO and reached
out to him and says, you know, what’s your gig? What do you do? What’s different? How are you
making an impact? And it was like, okay, well, okay, well, I’ll just build some of that into the
business plan. And the CEO of Triotus Bank is a fellow named Peter Blom. He’s been CEO, or had
been CEO for a long, long time. He just retired maybe a year ago. He’s a young guy, younger,
I’d say, a little younger than I am. But I think in 2009, the same year we opened, he formed the
Global Alliance for Banking on Values. And he just called together a group of friends, like-minded
bankers from around the world. I think there were seven of them and said, well, let’s
do this organization for best practices. Let’s try to, you know, build something out of this.
I think we were maybe, at first screen, we joined in 2012 after attending their conference in
Vancouver. And I think we may have been the 22nd member bank at that time. Now I think there’s 74
banks worldwide. I’m going through the map in my head of the globe. I think we’re on every continent,
will accept Antarctica. But amazing financial institutions doing amazing things.
Unfortunately, most of them are in the social space, you know, the S-part of ESG,
and financial inclusion, and poverty alleviation, and that sort of thing. But I think to the
financial institution, they want to do more environmental. And we’ve gotten a lot of inquiry,
and, you know, can you help us? What are you doing? All that sort of thing.
I’m still not sure I answered the question. But it’s a group of financial institutions
around the world. I don’t remember who the largest is at this point. We pale in comparison to a
a Wells, or a Chase, or a B of A in size. Cumulatively, we have pretty good size and pretty
good, pretty big dollar assets and a lot of coworkers worldwide. But our impact is far,
far greater than any of the too big to fail. I think the biggest institution is probably
Vansity Credit Union. They may be 18, 20 billion in assets, I’m not sure.
Interesting.
You know, it’s to me remarkable that you are doing so much innovative and
trailblazing work in the financial sector, in the environmental sector, in the social sector,
and you’re doing all this in Florida, which I know is one of the most populated
states in the United States, and has an incredible diversity of people and worldviews,
and so forth. And I also know that politically, Florida is well, how do we say it, maybe not
the most progressive state in the union as of today. And so I’m really curious, what is that
like for you as a business leader, as an entrepreneur, doing what you’re doing in that
environment? Has it been challenging? Is it straightforward? Is it sometimes funny, sometimes
frustrating? My friend Kat Taylor at Beneficial State Bank said, well, Ken,
you’re just a missionary in the jungle. You’re doing, you know, the good work. It’s like, okay,
well, as long as you keep telling me that, maybe you’ll convince me someday. But
it’s a challenge. It’s, I mean, a lot of times I sit back and go, this is just ridiculous. But
I don’t know. I’ve had this dream that people come into Florida and go, oh my gosh, look at all
the solar on rooftops. I wonder how that happened and say, well, there’s this really cool bank that,
you know, financed it all ethically and morally, unlike all the Fed texts that are
very predacious, slimy operators. I could name them, but I won’t. But it, the laws are extremely
regressive. They’re extremely unconstitutional. They’re extremely not capitalist. I mean, I don’t,
I just can’t, I just can’t explain how ridiculous it is here. But we just keep plowing ahead.
They passed the anti ESG bill last year, House Bill 3, that prevents a bank or financial institution
from discriminating against any person, person defied as the Citizens United, you know,
corporation as a per, for political, ideological, you know, they give a laundry list. So, you know,
it’s, it’s, like I said, it’s unconstitutional, like the don’t say gay bills, and they’ll get,
you know, over time, it’ll get chipped away, they’ll get defeated in courts of law,
all over the place, as long as we have any faith in the judicial system.
That’s another whole topic, I think. Yeah. As long as it doesn’t get to the U.S. Supreme Court,
put it that way. We could have a long conversation about that, I’m sure. Let me, Ken, let me remind
our audience, this is the YonEarth Community Podcasts. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry.
Today, we’re visiting with Ken LaRoe, the founder and chairman of Climate First Bank. You can find
Climate First Bank on the web at climatefirstbank.com. You can connect with Ken on LinkedIn, and we’ll
have the link for that in our show notes. You can also connect to the bank on LinkedIn. It’s
climate-first-bank, and the bank’s also on Facebook and Instagram at climatefirstbank,
as it is on YouTube. So, lots of different ways to connect in with the bank. Highly encourage
our audience to check out the bank and do some banking there with your personal banking, your
business banking, if you have a business, and if you’re at a company or organization,
encourage your leadership to look at Climate First Bank as a banking partner for the organization.
And speaking of partners, I want to be sure to thank some of our wonderful partners, which
includes Chelsea Green Publishing, Patagonia, Edafiq Solutions, Josephine Porter Institute,
Wele Waters, Profitable Purpose Consulting, Earth Coast Productions, and Soilworks. And, of course,
a huge thanks to our growing global network of ambassadors and folks who contribute to the
YonEarth community on a monthly basis. And if you haven’t yet signed up for a monthly donation
and you’d like to, you can go to yonearth.org, click on the support page, set that up at any
level that works well for you. You can also go to our Patreon page, and there you’ll see some
additional goodies and benefits when you sign up. For our friends in the U.S. who give out the $33
or greater level each month, we’re happy to send a monthly shipment of the biodynamically grown
hemp-infused aromatherapy soaking salts, Wele Waters, as a thank you, and as a way to support
your health and wellness as you’re doing your part in our movement toward planetary prosperity.
And speaking of partners around the world, I want to give a special shout-out also
to one of our Global Advisory Board members, Sarah Arau, who’s based in Uganda,
and whose organization Mantle of Hope is doing extraordinary work with women and girls and
young boys and men. And we just helped launch a GoFundMe to raise some money for Sarah and her
team to get more equipment and help more people in the communities and schools throughout rural
Uganda where she’s working. You’ll find info on our blog page at YNRF.org. You’ll see a wonderful
video about this, and if you go to GoFundMe, you’ll find Mantle of Hope under the Empower Ugandan
Women keyword search. Of course, a huge thanks to Climate First Bank for all you guys are doing, Ken,
and we’re thrilled to help spread the word and want to encourage folks to check it out,
check out Climate First Bank, and think about moving your money, moving your banking,
moving your loan needs over to Ken and his team to help with these positive feedback loops that
we’re talking about. And Ken, you know, picking up on this thread of some of the dynamics you’re
experiencing in Florida and reflecting on, you know, many of our international partners with the
work that we’re doing through the YNRF community, you know, the United Nations is engaged in so
many great initiatives worldwide and collaborating with so many wonderful
nonprofits and other organizations. And of course, here in the United States, there are a lot of
folks who have some real misconceptions about what the United Nations is up to. But what I wanted,
which basically our nation helped to create, I wanted to ask you specifically about one of the
UN initiatives that you’re connected to, which is the UNEP Finance Initiative, the United Nations
Environment Program Finance Initiative. Can you explain to us what that is and how that’s relevant
for Climate First Bank and what you’re doing lending here in this domestic context?
Well, the, we were actually involved with our last bank was when it kind of got started. And
I’d say it was, you know, fits and starts. It never, never really got terribly, you know, launched.
But I think now it kind of goes back to your question on the carbon markets thing and the,
you know, carbon trading. It’s starting to get traction. The Net Zero Banking Alliance,
they’re getting commitments, especially from the large banks, to reduce their carbon footprint,
which is a very complicated thing to do. As you know, the scope one, two, and three emissions
and how you measure it, how you actually impact it is, it’s maybe a little bit,
it’s maybe pretty straightforward for a manufacturing company or an operating company,
but for a bank it’s really, really difficult with thousands and tens of thousands of customers
and different businesses and how do you collect the data and all of that. So a lot of our involvement
is from that perspective of we want to do as good as we can do, but it’s being able to quantify that
through data and, you know, thank goodness there’s an initiative like that and thank goodness there’s
United Nations that can impact and draw in companies from all across the world
to where we can maybe piggyback, piggyback is the right word onto it.
So that’s kind of where it really, the positive impact that comes out of that. I’m not sure if I
answered the question adequately or not, but… Yeah, it helps. Thank you. That definitely helps me
form a bit more of a picture about what that’s about and what I might do is see if we can include
a link to that finance initiative in the show notes in case folks would like to learn more.
You and your team can provide me your 2023 impact report summary before our discussion today
and I was struck to see that already you guys, again, you’re only three years into this with
Climate First Bank, you’ve already originated over $150 million in loans from mission-driven
projects and companies, you’re working with a regenerative farm in Georgia, you have contributed,
you have donated over $213,000 to date to a variety of causes as well. I mean, you guys are
walking the talk to be sure. Can you give us a glimpse into what that looks like for you and
your team and how you’re thinking about projects and ways you can have impact as you’re going
forward and as you’re scaling? Well, the amazing thing is those numbers that were in the impact
report is how rapidly everything’s progressing and I think as of today, we’re probably $150 million
in just solar. We’re probably, I don’t even, I’ll get the number wrong, but probably
$50 million in ESOP. We’re, you know, it’s just, it’s $10 million here, $10 million there,
$10 million, $20 million in, you know, any, whatever, category, healthcare, education,
NGO banking, it’s just the numbers become staggering really quickly,
but we consider it in every decision that we make, you know, whether it’s the
product, whether it’s the underwriting, whether it’s on the deposit side, how can we
structure a product that gives back like our regeneration account or pride account
for the LGBTQ community. I mean, literally everything we do is looked at through the lens of
of ESG and how we can make a difference.
But while making a dollar, while turning in really stellar financial performance.
Yeah, that’s fabulous. You know, I know when you and I chatted the other day, you shared with me
that you’re a staunch. I think you might use the word like rabbit or something, but I’ll just use
the word you’re a staunch environmentalist and you’re a staunch capitalist. And before we wrap
up our interview today and transition to our behind the scenes segment for our ambassador
network and folks, if you haven’t yet joined the ambassador network and you’d like to,
you’ll get a lot of additional benefits, including access to our behind the scenes chats with our
podcast guests. We’ll dive into some of this a bit more, but I’m really curious, Ken, if you’d
share with our audience before we wrap up here, how did you get in this field of work in the
first place? Like what was it in your life path that pushed you in this direction or
pulled you in this direction or invited you in this direction of doing so much in the way of
environmental and social good as you’re working in banking and finance?
I wish I could say there was an epiphany moment, but there maybe was a bunch of little ones, you
know. I was born and raised in the same town I’m in right now, used this Florida small agrarian
town in Central Florida. I lived four miles from the house I grew up in and my dad grew up in that
he still lives in. And it’s a very regressive conservative community. I was a Republican until
I was 57 years old. And then I burned my voter card on video and put it on social media and became
an instant pariah around here, but the party didn’t represent me anymore. I’ve always been
an environmentalist and I’ve always loved to fish and I used to hunt. I don’t hunt really anymore,
but it really probably the genesis was a dear friend that became a dear friend 20 years ago
who would challenge my belief systems, which were pretty wrong-headed at the time,
and with a lot of love and compassion. And I started thinking, you know,
he’s right on that. You know, he’s right on that. And it really was a pretty gradual awakening.
Now I have grandchildren and it’s like it becomes perfectly clear why I do what I do.
I just want there to be a planet for those little people.
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Well, in our behind the scenes segment, I’ll ask you about some of the
really interesting looking things in your background, your office there. You’ve got helmets
and wheels and it looks like some artwork from grandchildren per chance and we’ll ask about
that. But before we wrap up here, our interview, can I just I want to thank you for taking the
time to visit with me and with us at the YonEarth community. And if there’s anything else
you’d like to share or say with our audience before we sign off, please, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you. Just I guess the the main thing or it’s kind of like what what can we do in our
life to make a difference. And the the biggest thing I can say is just, you know, vote with your
wallet. And my wife says everything she won’t buy anything unless she knows where it’s going to end
up. And if it’s going to ultimately end up in a landfill, she just doesn’t have any interest in
buying it. If it’s a consumable, you know, maybe, but I just vote with your wallet.
Beautiful. Well, can congratulations on all of your amazing growth and success with Climate
First Bank. And thanks again for joining us today. It’s been wonderful. Thank you.
The YonEarth community stewardship and sustainability podcast series is hosted by
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