It saddens me to announce the partnership between BECU.org and NAMMBA. The National Association of Minority Mortgage Bankers of America is making a horrible mistake working with BECU. I’ve expressed many reasons but being a company that supports minorities, fairness, and equality – you sadly picked the worst partner. BECU has a long history of using legal actions and unfair business practices. They had a class action lawsuit about overdraft fees which is just basically ripping people off and many customers got together and sued them. The company settled and ended up paying a settlement. You can look up all the customers they are suing on a regular basis as it is all public records. How many of those are minorities or people of color? BECU.org and its President who doesn’t even use his real name (John Benson Porter) cannot be trusted by the public or the businesses like NAMMBA. It’s is two-faced to act like such a community bank but behind the scenes, they just stick it to their customers with no empathy.
The partnership announcement was sent out as a press release by EIN Newswire. There is quote that reads, “Our sponsorship with NAMMBA is in line with BECU’s commitment to becoming a more equitable, diverse and inclusive cooperative, both internally and externally” by Lorraine Stewart who is the SVP of Mortgage at BECU.org. Maybe Lorraine Stewart missed the memo about fairness, diversity, and equity because the company she works for isn’t very fair as they happily sue their customers and take advantage of them and their money. Accepting all that revenue and giving very little back to the communities that need it the most. BECU does very little to help people of color from what I have seen and read. How much of that $180 million goes in the communities of people of color- very little. Lorraine Stewart, you’re not reading the room very well as it relates to the community and this partnership.
NAMMBA.org made a huge mistake working with BECU who claims to be a community bank but offers very little in return. NAMMBA CEO is Tony Thompson who happens to be the founder as well. It’s funny Tony Thompson is a person of color and falling for the bank’s false narrative of giving back. It’s all just marketing tactics to believe they really care but from my experience, they don’t care about anything but my money.