How U.S. Bank Measures Engagement With The LGBTQ Community

The LGBTQ community has made great strides in the past few decades, yet one area that’s still a struggle is financial equity. U.S. Bank is hoping to change that.

They recently conducted a “LGBTQ+ Financial Landscape insights” study designed to help organizations and advocates gain a greater understanding of the financial struggles the LGBTQ community faces.

With this data, U.S. Bank hopes to bring this financial conversation to the forefront. They hope to uncover barriers to financial security and identify actionable outcomes to focus on developing solutions.

U.S. Bank’s History with the LGBTQ Community

U.S. Bank has directly supported the LGBTQ community since 2012. That year, they launched their first Spectrum Business Resource Group chapter. Since then, they’ve grown to 14 local and global chapters. These chapters provide programming and Pride activations in local communities.

LGBTQ employees of U.S. Banks enjoy workplace practices and programs including an LGBTQ business resource group, promotion of self-identification, encouraging pronoun designation in email signatures, and more.

Medical benefits for employees are similarly inclusive. In 2019, U.S. Bank added financial assistance for surrogacy expenses. They also provide guidance for facilitating an employee’s gender transition to foster inclusion of transgender and gender non-conforming employees and applicants.

In May of 2018, they launched the first LGBTQ flagship branch in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco, California. This branch included Pride marketing materials plus new permanent fixtures in honor of the LGBTQ community.

On average, LGBTQ branches have a 20% higher customer satisfaction score than other community branches. Since 2018, they’ve continued to grow their LGBTQ flagship branches with the most recent opening in Chicago and Arizona.  

Plus, on a macro level, U.S. Bank has been supportive of legislation like the Equality Act through Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Respect for Marriage Act. The company is also a cofounder of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance which helps to reduce barriers for LGBTQ individuals and families accessing home loans.

Last, U.S. Bank celebrates Pride every year, in 45+ markets.

The Study and Data Application

The LGBTQ+ Financial Landscape insights study was developed, shared, and reviewed in partnership with the HRC and National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). It’s being utilized across business lines to help optimize customer experiences and support community organizations.

“U.S. Banks’ proprietary research hopes to drive product innovation, experience enhancements, inform business cases, community partnerships, financial education strategy, marketing content, and accelerate institutional learning about the community,” said Justin Windschitl, Consumer and Business Banking chief risk officer, serving as an executive sponsor of the U.S. Bank’s Spectrum LGBTQ+ BRG..

Products and services can inform consumer lending, deposits, and wealth business cases. It also aims to discover financial pain points and develop tailored education materials. Marketing aims to elevate the quality and effectiveness of such efforts for LGBTQ consumers, including thought leadership presentations and speaking engagements.

What does all that mean? The report essentially helps build an understanding of the needs, goals, and challenges of the LGBTQ community. It implores companies to listen to their LGBTQ customers and employees, encouraging them to use existing channels like employee engagement surveys and customer insight analytics.

Using open-source, peer-to-peer online conversations about finances, U.S. Bank commissioned a review of 16.9 million data points. Using the authentic voices from within the LGBTQ community, they developed questions. In partnership with HRC and NGLCC, they conducted an online study with 1,258 respondents who self-identified as LGBTQ, and a comparison group of 311 who self- identified as non-LGBTQ.

The report aimed to address a big challenge in LGBTQ research: comparing differences between the groups within the community. For example, transgender individuals might have different financial struggles than lesbian individuals. Analyzing the community as a whole can overlook the distinctions between the subsets.

U.S. Bank also acknowledges the importance of intersectionality. They note that gender, race, religion, physical ability, and other factors play a part in some responses related to discrimination.

The study looked at things like bullying in schools and how it can cause LGBTQ students to drop out of education entirely, affecting their future finances. It also examined workplace and housing discrimination, learning that LGBTQ adults earn 90 cents for every dollar earned by an American worker (and the wage gap is even larger for women, BIPOC individuals, and transgender men and women). Medical care and family formation were also studied.

Tangible Benefits for LGBTQ Folks

U.S. Bank has an integrated campaign focused on supporting the communities, including the unique financial needs of LGBTQ individuals, helping them to save and budget to reach their goals.

Plus, their 2020 and 2021 campaigns also included a $25,000 grant to support the HRC Foundation Transgender Justice Initiative. This grant included a focus on economic empowerment and accessing pathways to employment through job fairs and new training opportunities and to improve health and economic outcomes for thousands of transgender people (particularly Black and Latinx transgender women) in their respective local and community settings.

“U.S. Bank is committed to continuing to center the lives of historically marginalized LGBTQ+ people and support the community to achieve their financial goals,” said Windschitl.

U.S. Bank’s LGBTQ+ Family Planning site helps their customers find the right financing options for expanding their families.

With this study, U.S. Bank also recognizes the responsibility that the banking industry has to meet the financial needs of LGBTQ consumers. They are committed to helping every customer of theirs achieve their financial aspirations, hopefully leading to the acceleration of financial equity.