Our Impact Metrics

Commentary

This year saw our loan portfolio diversify in multiple ways. The portion of loans to BIPOC owners and operators more than doubled, for example – but we also sought out partner businesses of a wider range of shapes and sizes, as evidenced by the larger portion of deals where we were the only bank offer (47% this year vs. 14% last) and the relative drop in our borrowers’ Impact Assessment scores. Also, while 2023 included several loans to large (1,000+ acre) agricultural operations (ex. Stone House Grain and Dharma Lea in New York, Regen Custom Beef and Beam Farms in North Carolina), 2024 included more loans to consumer-facing food brands, organizations in the sustainability industry, and infrastructure businesses elsewhere in the food supply chain – which drove the much smaller “acres of farmland funded” figure this year. You’ll notice that our opening highlights section touted the 85 loans closed in 2024, which is greater than the 33 new submissions we received of our Impact Assessment. A range of factors drive that result: Only new relationships take the Impact Assessment, there’s a one-to-many relationship between borrowers and loans, and some loan types (small business loans under $150K, loan purchases) aren’t subject to the requirement to complete it. Also worth noting: As mentioned earlier, we deployed a new version of our Impact Assessment mid-year. As a result, we’re resetting many of our internal benchmarks on borrower impact performance - as we collect new data.