Anne Finucane is a leader in the promotion and implementation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and has long been a champion for underrepresented communities around the world. She’s sharply focused on eradicating poverty with a hands-on approach and has a unique theory of change for the banking industry. Ms. Finucane shares her journey to purposeful leadership at the Connect Summit on radical collaboration. 
Anne Finucane, Vice Chairman, Bank of America Moderated by Ellen McGirt, Fortune Connect

Connect Summit: C-suite Unplugged with Bank of America's Anne Finucane 

headshot of Anne Finucane, Vice Chairman of Bank of America

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blood. Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening. Depending on where in the world you are. Drop your location in the chat please so we can see where you're coming from. It's great to see some new faces and some familiar names and faces welcome everybody. This is the second in R. C. Suite. Unplugged series conversations that are held exclusively for fortune connect fellows at the heart of it, connected the platform and now a community that is dedicated to helping people develop the essential leadership skills in themselves and others that can make work better and the world more equitable for us. That fortune that means a new understanding of how the world is changing specifically as it relates to our three key pillars, leading in the purpose driven world, understanding, stakeholder capitalism and creating an inclusive, anti racist workforce. I'm Ellen McGirt 14 senior editor and connect editorial director and it is my pleasure to welcome everyone of you today. So here's Al kelly, Ceo dan schulman is the ceo of Paypal and Corey buried. The ceo of Best buy came from a long line of principals and teachers and I was pretty sure I was going to be a teacher. Frankly, you can tell the difference between somebody being genuine and authentic and somebody who's not when I was Ceo, I didn't leave her for 10 years. The last five years I spent more of my time using the size and scale of the company to drive more transformative change. Now. You know, we're kind of weathering the storm of the pandemic and our whole focus through the pandemic has been to take care of our people and particularly on frontline staff in our stores and to emerge from the pandemic stronger when you wake up and you feel like you were born to do something, you know that you are tapping into your purpose. The challenges they set up in a room for the Ceos you don't look different. So the trick is how about embracing it? And so I make it about who I am, what I do. I answer questions about turbans and hair and the Sikh religion and I do it with a sense of desire to improve the knowledge of people around me, movements themselves are fundamentally about transferring more power into the hands of more people. There are complex challenges that our community space and there's no one civil bullets right there. There are multiple challenges and therefore the solutions we provide have to be multifaceted. It only makes sense to have leadership and our teams and these companies representative of those communities that so greatly need um this kind of focus on the sustainable solutions and products to come out of it. What happened is I spent the first decade right like pointing out the problems like here's the problem here is the problem here is the problem. And I eventually got to, I'm like, I don't want to just point out problems anymore. I want to start talking about what's the solution. We've got some beautiful questions here coming up, but I would like to invite Alan Murray to a mute and bring the perspective. We got a ton of questions in the tab here to send you into some small groups where you can write together and share your stories and when you come back would love to see your statements in the chat. I would like you all to meet the founder of the Holland filters on Jeff Canada Canada to meet you, but I just wanted to say hi and I'm, this country needs great leaders right now, more than ever before. Change is concept. And when the pace of change external to the company is greater than the pace of change internal you're falling behind. It's been lovely to connect with each and every one of you. You know where you can find me and I hope you have a great rest of your day and more importantly a wonderful experience on connect going forward. But I hope to see you lots and lots of money. Mhm. Yeah. I love I do love that video. That's a lot of what we've been doing, connect for the last 889 10 months. It's been an amazing ride. There's over 1000 fellows now in 70 country, 70 companies and industries and over 35 countries. And we we have this has really been a great adventure for all of us. Uh One of our favorite segments have become C suite unplugged, where we ask um Ceos people in the C suite about their journeys to purposeful leadership, what's happening, the decisions that they're making and just their lives. So our first conversation um of the of the summit session is with a woman who has long been a champion for the underrepresented. I've seen her work in person Um and making important investments, investments in vulnerable communities around the world. And in 2020 perhaps really the only difference is that her innovative strategies and tackling these kinds of really huge endemic and systemic challenges picked up a few notches. So we are thrilled to we are thrilled to welcome and to neuquen who crawled through several layers of cyberspace to be with us today. She's the vice chair at Bank of America and we have you, you have me, you, I have confusion. Don't face Philly. This is the way we live now. Do you need a cup of coffee? I wish I was there. I would serve you something. No, it's great to be with you Ellen. Good to see you too. Welcome to connect just with just the thrill to have you here. I have a list on my list to ask you about your 1,000,000,004 year commitment of additional support to local communities. I want to talk about what's happening in investment banking and I want to I want to talk about your work and sustainability and just how Bank of America has taken a tough stance and choices. That's on my list. I want to invite everybody to um to make sure what's on their list shows up in the comments. I thought that would help us if we just ask you what your job is. It is an enormous title and you seem to have a key role in so many things. What's your day like, confusing and full? Uh So I have sort of uh two major functions. One is that I oversee our uh climate finance with our ceo tom Montag as well as E S. G. In general. So S. G is sort of part of our culture as well as a business opportunity for us, which I can explain in a minute and then um also overseeing public policy. But the other part of my job is that I'm the chairman of where I should say, chair of Bank of America europe. So in the wake of of Brexit, we needed to stand up a fully functional european bank outside of the UK. So we've done that, we did that a couple of years ago almost three years ago, wow, that was an action packed. Let's start with a billion dollars because that's a nice big number. They made Bancamerica made quite a bit of news last year with your four year commitment of support to help local communities specifically to help the economic and racial inequality that the pandemic has made so much more clear. Can you tell us a little bit about that decision and what what were some of the barriers to getting that money distributed? Well the thing is it was like a transformational and dual crisis. You had the pandemic going on and then the killing of George Floyd and Brianna taylor and others. So a lot going on at one moment and this created a sense of urgency for us. We've been doing some work for a while um trying to do some work specifically on racial equality and economic opportunity but um Andrew plepler, who I work with and is the head of E. S. G. Came to me and said I think we could do more, he had some ideas, we got together with the leadership of the african american, black leadership in the company as well as hispanic and latino, and we just kind of worked through some uh scenarios. We then approached our ceo who said not only am I willing to do that, but I'm willing to do more and that's how we got to the billion dollars, this is different than or I guess it's in addition to what we do in affordable housing, or were the largest lender to community development financial institutions, which I'm very proud of, but this was uh sort of an additional layer, something that we wouldn't normally do, and we focused on four areas small business, getting capital to small businesses for people of color, particularly women, but all people of color. Uh secondly healthcare, obviously the healthcare issue was extensive and acute uh then in the area of affordable housing as well and um job creation, so if I could just spend a minute on one of them, it kind of gets you to this link that you mentioned about investment banking and that is getting capital to small businesses, because if you're a bank by the time somebody gets to you and ask you for a loan, they've got a couple of years of of success under their belt, they're making some kind of money, or at least they're breaking even and it's at a later stage, but people need money earlier and uh they max out their credit cards, they ask friends and family, but that's not very efficient. And uh the way that we thought we could help, and honestly this was uh an unknown to us with this work, could we find venture capital funds that were themselves minority owned and operated And because they in turn provide financing to small businesses, uh for people of color, diversity, women, uh in local communities. So honestly, I can't say I thought there were that many venture capital funds And I didn't know how well this would work. We do have 90 markets in the US we have market presidents in each of those markets, we linked with them. And then the investment bank came in. Uh Karima see who runs a section of the investment bank. And he said, I think I can pull this together. He not only pulled it together, but he himself was able to get um a lot of investment bankers, all divers to come in and help him. And so this collection of market presidents, a very diverse investment banking group, uh found venture capital funds at the market level. and what I thought might be maybe $100 million is going to be north of $300 million. Um, And by the way, many of those will make money. And when they make money, we'll just reset that money and put it back in motion into the markets. So this is a real breakthrough and something I'm not sure I thought could happen. Certainly we wouldn't have done before the pandemic or um, I hate to say it, but they're just the acute reckoning uh, with George Floyd and, and I'm very proud of it because it's really different. You should be. That is fascinating. It's almost sounds, that sounds like a case study. I we got two requests for more detail about your work on climate finance, which I found an extraordinarily interesting part of our conversation. Tell us tell us about it. Because the commitment, the banking industry's commitment to carbon net zero, It's a surprise, has some surprising elements. Yes it does have some surprising elements. I'm not sure that everybody has figured this. You know the continuum out completely. But just to go back in the um paris uh Climate accord which was in December of 2015, 100 and 20 company countries set in motion their commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and make sure that we would not have temperatures rise beyond two degrees. And now I think we're at 1.5 because there's been enough action. And then in more recent times, 170 financial institutions across the universe signed up to go internet zero. Now the big ones are the six big banks in the U. S. So bank of America Citi, jp morgan, um morgan Stanley wells Fargo and who have I left Goldman Sachs. And we all committed to net zero. So what does that mean? It not only means we become carbon neutral, were already carbon neutral uh which is your own operations or carbon neutral, but net zero means your entire supply chain is is uh carbon neutral, everything your employees, your vendors, your clients, your customers. So you have to work with every single one of these clients and customers to get them to net zero for this to work. And if you have 170 financial institutions that have committed to this, I think this is the most powerful sort of guarantee that it will happen were highly regulated. So we've committed to it and we're laying plans with our clients and our customers as we speak to try to help them through, it takes Four or five years to get to carbon neutrality. You don't have linked renewable grids in the us today. And as it is, 80% of the world is, you know, energized, electrified by fossil fuels. So this is an enormous undertaking, but that so many would have committed to this and so quickly, but particularly these 66 big multinational banks and then europe has already passed laws and regulations that require it. I think you're going to see huge differences in the next few years. Do you have any targets or benchmarks you can share? Yeah. Well, the first is carbon neutrality on your own. So as I said, we're carbon neutral, which is actually very helpful because you can take your customers, your clients through that journey. It's not quick. I mean, the first thing you do is a checklist with people uh by your, you know, electricity from renewable grids, put solar panels, wind, reduce your water usage, reduce your paper usage. There, there's just so many things that you have to do to get there. Um, You know, the strange thing is, and I don't know how this will pretend for the future, but In 2020, we had one of our best years as a country of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Because skyscrapers we're not lit, no a c no, you know, lions on, we weren't traveling in our cars as much. And we made real inroads. So is that, does that indicate that maybe work of the future will be different? So these are things that are very real. Um The other thing, that's the benchmark is we and other banks, but I'll just use us as an example committed to financing um carbon reduction. So helping climate financing for uh to do $1 trillion worth of financing in the next 10 years. And actually, I think that's going to be conservative because if you're helping every company get to carbon neutrality, they're going to need some refinancing to get there. One is we work with these venture capital funds. They are working with the small businesses to help them get ready. But we have a program with Cornell. There are other programs, but um we've been able to work with 20,000 women. We committed first there were 1000, then it was 2000, and now we're up to 20,000. It's a um uh there are courses, they're all online and if you finish the course low, which is five or six um units, you will get a certificate from Cornell. And what it actually, I mean, that's nice, but what it really does is it helps you with balance sheet income statements, how to reduce your expenses, how to market yourself very practical things. These are not um fluff, it's what you need to get ready. And there are other programs through other financial institutions. But in our program with the venture capital funds were asking them help these companies to get ready. Venture capital is pretty early money in. The thing is is that you have to know what does that mean for you as a group. But I think as we do it, frankly, I think other financial institutions are going to do similar programs and it allows us to get capital to women and to people of color at an earlier stage than they've ever gotten it before. And if we can do it, others can do it as well. Um We only have a few minutes left. The Great Alan Murray has a question that's about stakeholder capitalism and disguise. How do you convince people that this talk about? E. S. G. Is more than just greenwashing or purpose washing? And I think that means it's pretty serious when regulated institutions are paying attention to it. Yeah, good question. And thank you, Alan. Well the first thing is is that a few years ago, like five years ago I asked our um sort of world class research people, market research people, can they do a market study that would indicate whether E. S. G. Is a creative or a problem for a company. And Savita Subramanian, who is just aces at this and now, you know many studies in and uh talks to the market at all times, really was able to uh set a benchmark for us. And the fact is that those companies that apply E. S. G. To their culture, to their thinking, so you're thinking about the environment, you're thinking about your social contract with your employees and your clients and your customers and then you are governance is as much about transparency as anything. What are you doing? Are you showing it is it transparent? Those companies are just doing better? They are less apt to have bankruptcy, They have higher customer satisfaction, They have higher employee a satisfaction. They have lower attrition and their their results are better. And honestly, I can say as a company that went through all of this and We were at one point along with the other banks poster uh Children for things that were not going well 10 years ago, 11 years ago. And we applied all of this thinking to the way we ran our company and indeed our company has higher returns, lower volatility, lower attrition with both employees and clients. So I mean we're kind of a living model of it, But we we could show you on any business that this works well and again you have to say it, show it and be transparent. Yeah, no, that's wonderful. We have only one minute left. I've got a leadership question for you. It's a delightful one. I'd like to think there's an amazing group chat with you jane fraser to Shauna Duckett and all the amazing women in big banking right now who support each other. If I was going to be able to create a group chat for women on the way up like myself, really intersectional, what should we be talking about it to get where we want to go. We'll learn whatever business you're in. That's the first thing, I mean really learn it and I'm always learning so I'm a perpetual student, never quite sure that I've got it all down. Some always trying to learn something new even within my own business, be aware of the outside environment. I'm surprised that people just don't read more than they do because I think that's incredibly important and then recognize that um we can't change the past, our personal past or our professional past, but we can learn from what we can apply it and if we do that along with having gotten better at the business and understanding the outside world and kind of networking with each other, I really do think that that improves everything. It's certainly been huge for me in my own life.