City National Bank donates $1M amid ‘long and deep’ COVID impact on Miami economy
City National Bank announced this week it has donated $1 million to a variety of local nonprofits to support response to the COVID-19 emergency.
In an interview, CEO Jorge Gonzalez said Greater Miami’s economic recovery “is going to take awhile.”
“The impact has been long and deep,” he said. “We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel, a bit more optimism with unemployment coming down and with the reopenings. But to have something so spontaneous and impactful hit across the entire globe...the relief effort this takes is huge.”
Recipients of the donation include major non-profit hospitals in Florida including Jackson Memorial, Baptist Health and Orlando Health. Others include Feeding South Florida; Miami Bridge, which supports youth in crisis; and Camillus House, which aids the homeless.
“As Miami-Dade’s nonprofit, safety net hospital system, Jackson relies on financial support from private sector partners like City National Bank,” said Carlos A. Migoya, president and CEO of Jackson Health System, in a statement. “Our physicians, nurses, and other frontline healthcare providers have been working tirelessly under extremely difficult circumstances throughout this pandemic, and the resources provided by City National Bank will help ensure we can continue providing our community with the highest level of medical care.”
City National has been among the most active local banks in facilitating the Paycheck Protection Program, having completed approximately 9,000 loans totaling some $2 billion.
“That’s typically what we do in an entire year,” Gonzalez said in an earlier interview.
City National has also been among the most active banks in the nation in implementing the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Lending Program, designed to support small and medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations “that were in sound financial condition before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Gonzalez said the bank projects it will facilitate approximately $1 billion in loans under that program.
Gonzalez credits strong local relationships and investments in new technology for being able to execute both programs.
“If we were smaller, maybe we wouldn’t have the resources or technology,” he said. “And if we were larger, we might have the resources but maybe not the relationships.”
Ken Thomas, president at Community Development Fund Advisors LLC and a top Florida banking expert, said City National is uniquely positioned among local banks to provide outsized relief. One reason, he said, is that it is owned by a Chilean banking group, Banco de Crédito e Inversiones, which appears to be focused only on building a strong, healthy bank.
“They’re not owned by Wall Street,” he said. “No one is trying to build them up just to flip them. They have stable, loyal, permanent capital.”
Gonzalez said that at the moment, the bank is not predicting a significant amount of evictions and foreclosures despite ongoing deferrals by government.
Still, he said, traditional lending continues to be slow. The bank’s biggest job now is prioritizing clients “where we have visibility to cash flow going forward.”
“If there are no other major setbacks we should be okay, but a lot is still dependent on COVID infections,” he said. “We are being cautious, but we are open for business.”
