The New Old-Fashioned Banking

Fifteen minutes south of Chicago’s Loop, the inner-city neighborhood of South Shore has an old-fashioned bank with a radical twist. For those of us at South Shore Bank, banking means knowing the borrower, the neighborhood, property values, and the economic environment. It means tough credit standards, cautious qualification of borrowers, and close monitoring of the projects and businesses we lend to. So while 20% of our community’s population is below the poverty line, our bank’s rate of loan failure is well below the national average.