Are Seaway Bank account holders withdrawing their accounts?

@th3melan8dgawd

I wonder if this is going to be an ongoing trend with Seaway Bank under non-Black ownership:

Seaway customer Gwen Hicks said she planned to withdraw all her money and close her account. She said she would start banking at Illinois Service Federal.

“I definitely want to keep our money in our community and not in Texas,” she said. “Texas isn’t going to do anything for our South Side streets, our neighborhood.”

Sushil Patel, president of State Bank of Texas told Crain’s Chicago Business that he understands some depositors want to bank with an institution that’s putting money back into the community. State Bank of Texas declined to be interviewed by WBEZ.

Despite State Bank of Texas being a minority-owned operation, Viveca Ware of Independent Community Bankers of America said there will be cultural differences.

Ware said minority-owned banks don’t necessarily translate from one to the next.

“It’s really amazing to sit there and listen to the cultural difference and how they need to modify their operations to address to provide meaningful services to those communities,” Ware said.

Worlee said on Nextdoor that "If the new owners think just keeping the name is enough they are in for a rude awakening."

I'm learning more and more how passionate our community was about Seaway. It was an important financial institution in our community and it slipped out of local hands. Now that there are some moves to cut down on the workforce for Seaway it won't be something of an economic engine it once was.