The United States Department of the Treasury, through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has declared GN Bank the only wholly African owned in the USA, safe and sound.
In a letter to the directors of the Bank on June 30, 2025, the OCC officially terminated the consent order placed on GN Bank, Chicago, Illinois, USA 2020.
The OCC initially placed a consent order on the then Illinois Service Federal (ISF) Bank in 2015. This was renewed in 2020 on the bank renamed GN Bank.
The consent order was initially issued to ensure that GN Bank, like all financial institutions operating within the U.S. financial system, adhered to applicable laws, regulations, and sound safety and operational practices.
The Cease-and-Desist Order issued against GN Bank, Chicago, aimed to address unsafe or unsound practices related to the bank’s strategic and capital planning, credit risk management, and overall governance.
It also cited concerns over non-performing loans and weak management practices. As a result, GN Bank was restricted to conducting only certain types of banking transactions.
However, after reviewing and confirming GN Bank’s compliance with applicable laws and regulations—as demonstrated through submissions by the Bank’s duly elected officials—the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has terminated the consent order previously placed on GN Bank, Chicago. The OCC determined that the order no longer needed to remain in effect.
GN Bank can engage in any and all banking activities in the USA just like its much bigger competitors such as Bank of America and Citi Bank. It with its national license, the Bank can establish branches in any state of the USA as long as its capital will support it.
The Chief Operations Officer of the bank is Papa Wassa (Chiefy) Nduom.
The termination order states, in part:
“WHEREAS, to assure the safety and soundness of GN Bank, Chicago, Illinois (‘Bank’) and its compliance with laws and regulations, and after obtaining the Bank’s consent through its duly elected and acting Board of Directors, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (‘OCC’) issued, through the duly authorized representative of the Comptroller of the Currency (‘Comptroller’), a Consent Order against the Bank dated September 18, 2020, AA-EC-2020-53 (‘Order’); and
…WHEREAS the OCC believes that the safety and soundness of the Bank and its compliance with laws and regulations does not require the continued existence of the Order.”
The termination was formally directed by Matthew Vick, Acting Director for Special Supervision and duly authorized representative of the Comptroller, who declared:
“That the Order be, and it hereby is, TERMINATED.”
Background to OCC’s enforcement actions for July 2025
The office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) disclosed this month (July) that it has “released enforcement actions taken against national banks and federal savings associations (banks), and individuals currently and formerly affiliated with banks the OCC supervises.”
The enforcement actions are used by the OCC, against banks and other financial institutions operating within the US requiring their board of directors and management teams to take timely actions to correct any such deficient practices or violations identified by the regulator.
The OCC uses enforcement action against institution-affiliated party (IAP) “to deter, encourage correction of, or prevent violations, unsafe or unsound practices, or breaches of fiduciary duty.”
The term “institution-affiliated party,” or IAP, is defined in 12 USC 1813(U) and includes bank directors, officers, employees, and controlling shareholders. Orders of prohibition prohibit an individual from any participation in the affairs of a bank or other institution as defined in 12 USC 1818(e) (7).
Enforcement of these actions against IAPs, according to the OCC, “reinforce the accountability of individuals for the conduct regarding the affairs of the bank.”
The OCC terminates enforcement actions when a bank has demonstrated compliance with all articles of an enforcement action; or when the OCC determines that articles deemed “not in compliance” have become outdated or irrelevant to the bank’s current circumstances; or when the OCC incorporates the articles deemed “not in compliance” into a new action.
The directors of GN Bank are:
1. Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, Chairman & Acting President;
2. Ms. Lisa Finch;
3. Mr. Francis Baffour;
4. Mrs. Yvonne Nduom;
5. Mr. Brandon Young Fountain;
6. Mr. Wiley Adams;
7. Mr. Ty Bonds; and
8. Mr. Robert Riecker.
The Advisory Directors of the Bank are: Dr. Nana Kweku Nduom and Mr. Papa Wassa Chiefy Nduom, who is also the COO.
Previously known as ISF Bank, the African-American owned bank based in Chicago, was officially rebranded as GN Bank, USA in July 2018, following its acquisition in 2016.
The bank was founded in 1934 by 13 Black men and became the only African-American owned bank in Illinois after another bank, Seaway Bank, collapsed.
The name change to GN Bank was part of a three-year turnaround plan implemented after the 2016 acquisition, with the goal of bringing in new capital, management, and technology while maintaining its African-American ownership and community focus.
Dr. Nduom led the acquisition of GN Bank in April 2016 after more than one year of research, due diligence and negotiation with the directors and the OCC. At the time of the acquisition, he said:
“We want something different to come out of the South Side of Chicago,” says Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, president of Groupe Nduom and chairman of ISF Bank.
“We’re linking the South Side to the world through this traditional, black-owned bank.”
At a time when available lending capital had been decreasing for black-owned businesses, GN Bank became one of the few remaining African American-owned banks operating in the United States.
History of Black-owned banks in the USA
Black-owned banks didn’t exist until more than a century after the Bank of North America first opened its doors. Prior to the chartering of the first Black-owned bank in 1888, the U.S. Congress and then-President Abraham Lincoln established Freedman’s Savings Bank in 1865.
As part of the Freedman’s Bureau, this institution was designed to help newly freed African Americans navigate the U.S. financial system.
The first officially chartered Black-owned bank, True Reformers Bank, was founded on March 2, 1888, by the Rev. William Washington Browne.
A former slave and Union Army officer, Browne was founder of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers fraternal organization.
True Reformers Bank came about when Browne and his organization faced financial hardships while trying to establish a new branch in Virginia.
Unable to manage the order’s money without arousing suspicion from paranoid and prejudiced locals, Browne founded True Reformers Bank so that the organization’s finances would be free of scrutiny from White people.
Mr. Jesse Binga founded the Binga State bank in 1908 in Chicago and it was the first of its kind in the State of Illinois.
A real estate businessman, he realized that his Black clients could not get loans from white banks, so Binga chartered a bank himself.
“Just as discrimination and white flight led to his real estate success, he turned the white banks’ refusal to lend to his real estate clients into another source of profit,” Mehrsa Baradaran, who writes about Binga in her 2017 book “The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap wrote.
At the height of its success, Binga’s bank was “consistently more capitalized” than its white counterparts and seen as “a model of sound banking,” she added. But the truth is that success didn’t come easy because Binga’s home, in a white neighborhood, was bombed seven times.
Back then, before the Federal Reserve or the FDIC, Binga and other Chicago bankers paid for memberships in the Chicago Clearinghouse, a cooperative of bankers who provided funds to ensure members had access to liquidity in a crisis.
There are 148 minority-owned financial institutions in the United States. Taken together, they have approximately $349 billion in assets in total. Of these, 23 are Black-owned banks. GN Bank is one of them.
By 1934, there were 134 Black-owned banks, but only nine survived the Great Depression. The number of Black-owned banks grew again in the 1970s to around 50, but the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s reduced that number to 27. Today, only 23 Black-owned banks remain.
Although few in number, these banks remain crucial for supporting economic growth and opportunities in Black communities.
