As the state’s energy woes increase electricity bills for businesses from Eureka to San Diego, U.S. Bank is stepping up to help shoulder some of the burden.
The Minneapolis-based bank is now offering discount loans to individuals and businesses that want to make energy-saving improvements to their homes and facilities.
The bank is offering reduced interest rates and waiving the origination fees for unsecured consumer loans, home-equity loans and small-business loans. The borrowers must prove they will use the funds to install energy-saving windows, lights, machinery or other devices.
David Rainer, president of the Southern California market for U.S. Bank, said the institution does not have any idea what the demand for the new products will be.
“There is not a precedent for this. I have nothing to compare it to. I can’t project or forecast in terms of demand. We are just trying to do something positive,” Rainer said.
The bank began offering the energy loans two weeks ago in all of its 150 branches and will continue as long as the energy crisis continues.
The project allows the bank to garner some good will from California businesses, a segment it has been trying to go after since it bought Santa Monica Bank in 1995.
“It is a market we have made some investments to get into,” Rainer said.
U.S. Bank came into the California market in the mid-’90s when it acquired a few San Diego-based banks.
It already had a presence in Northern California, but when it acquired Western Bancorp in 2000, it picked up Southern California Bank and Santa Monica Bank, giving it the Los Angeles and Orange County presence it needed to compete in Southern California. n
