Vancity Community Investment Bank (VCIB), born from Vancity’s community-first finance model, is a values-driven bank on a mission to finance a sustainable tomorrow. In this episode we learn more about how VCIB is creating lasting change in communities though financing for social purpose real estate, their acquisition of CoPower and simplifying investing for the future.



Last year in 2019 we added over 17 new social purpose real estate loans to our portfolio, these are predominantly mortgages to organizations driving social purpose real estate projects that represented over 600 new units of affordable housing predominantly in Ontario and over 300,000 sq feet of social purpose real estate, including things like co-working spaces and cultural spaces.Lars Boggild, Investment Product Manager







Transcript of Interview with Lars Boggild



Jenelle:Hello. How are you doing?



Lars Boggild:Pretty good so far.



Jenelle:Thanks for being here with us today Lars. So today we have with us Lars Boggild, Investment Product Manager at Vancity Community Investment Bank and you can look Vancity up at VCIB.ca. So Lars, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your organization, its mission and your role with Vancity?



Lars Boggild:Yeah, sure. So Vancity Community Investment Bank, sometimes known as VCIB is a commercial banking arm of Vancity Credit Union. So we’re a national schedule one bank regulated under OSFI with a very unique mission as Canada’s first dedicated impact bank. We’re able to do that really as an extension building on the history of Vancity Credit Union as our parent company. The credit union is a really longstanding financial institution out West in Vancouver, British Columbia. And over the years has grown to be English Canada’s largest credit union with well over 500,000 members and nearly 30 billion Canadian in assets. But, more importantly really has been a progressive leader in trying to see community development and environmental sustainability values manifested and embedded into its core practices as a lender.



Lars Boggild:To the degree where about a quarter of the overall asset base is actually deployed today with a triple bottom line, and is a number we’d love to see grow and really that’s one of the primary reasons for being of a VCIB is to really serve as a dedicated function that just does impact focus banking and lending to help grow that part of the economy. My own role within it is really working with our investor clients who are looking to make a kind of bank like, but impactful investments in their portfolio, mostly with mission driven institution. So I have the pleasure to work with a lot of both kind of small and scrappy nonprofits that have a little bit of money tucked away all the way through to really big organizations like foundations and unions and some municipalities that are interested in aligning their investments more with their values.



Jenelle:Vancity Community Investment Banks, definitely been known to your point, be focused on community and economic and it’s great to hear the range with the different projects and organizations that you’re hoping to drive impact with. Can you speak to a few specific metrics that you believe highlight the impact that VCIB has had?



Lars Boggild:Yeah, sure. And I would say, we’re fairly early in our journey as VCIB and benefiting obviously from nearly 70 years of history, we’re over 75 years of history at the credit union. But for VCIB, our lending and impact lending really is focused in two major areas. So one is social purpose real estate as a theme. So keep in mind things like affordable housing, green buildings,