First Nations open Baker's first bank
Already serving customers, grand opening scheduled for March 20
Walter Strong
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 17, 2014
QAMANITTUAQ/BAKER LAKE
The first bank in Baker Lake began serving residents last week with the opening of the First Nations Bank (FNB) branch at a kiosk in the Baker Lake Coop.
"Our grand opening is March 20," FNB spokesperson Mark Soloway said. "We've been doing early account openings and interacting with a lot of residents (for the past month)."
"It's the first bank in Baker Lake. It's kind of a big deal for the community. There's been no one on the ground there delivering financial services before now."
Before the arrival of a Baker Lake location, area residents had to set up banks out of town and travel for banking services.
"They would leave the community and set up an account somewhere else, in Yellowknife or Iqaluit," Soloway said.
"They would have service," Soloway added, "But they didn't have a local physical banking location. We're going to have somebody physically there who's linked to our head office in Saskatoon. That (service) not available in a lot of these communities."
First Nations Bank of Canada is a Saskatoon-based, aboriginal majority-owned and controlled charted bank primarily focused on providing and expanding financial services and understanding to First Nations members. The bank offers the full range of banking services available at any other bank to aboriginal and non-aboriginal residents.
The bank opened their first branch in Saskatoon in 1997 and has grown from an asset base of under $11 million to an asset base of more than $285 million, according to the banks 2012 annual report.
Opening a branch in Baker Lake, although not necessarily major revenue generator for the bank, keeps to the bank's mandate to improve financial services and literacy among aboriginal people.
"It's about bringing services into Northern communities," Soloway said. "Because we're an aboriginal bank, we're dedicated to helping our First Nations, Inuit, and Metis on the financial side of the equation."
A Pond Inlet location is the next project, but that won't get underway until the Baker Lake branch is up and running, Soloway said.
