How to start a bank

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In some ways, starting a bank is a lot like starting any other business. Who will you hire? Where will you be located? What color will the couches be? But it's also way more complicated. There are tons of regulations on banks–and you can understand why. Lots of new businesses fail. But if a bank fails, it can have ripple effects for the entire economy.

Today on the show, a baby bank is born. We go along for the ride from idea to ribbon cutting as a community bank gets off the ground.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Katie Mingle. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:05.6	So, Sally, you've spent the last six months or so talking to these two women in Columbus, Ohio,
0:11.9	who've been doing something that in today's world is kind of rare.
0:16.1	Yeah, they have been in the process of starting a bank.
0:20.3	And I've got to say, like, I barely knew that was something you could do.
0:24.9	Right. Like, where are you going to even go to get, like, big, gigantic marble columns?
0:28.8	What, you're going to go to the quarry?
0:30.1	Where are you going to get your vault with the tourney thing on the front of it?
0:34.0	Where do you get all your big stacks of cash to put in that vault?
0:37.5	Erica, I wanted to find out. You're in the secret tunnels of the bank. That is the bank's
0:42.6	CEO, Elaria Rawlins. The bank is called Fortuna, named for the Roman goddess of fortune.
0:49.3	The two of us are standing in one of the bank's back hallways, aka secret tunnels.
0:54.0	Speaking of that, where is the money?
0:56.2	Yeah, I cannot tell you where the money is.
0:59.3	Oh, come on.
1:01.0	Erica, Alaria told me they do have a vault.
1:03.6	It's all ready to go, but it is in a secret location for security reasons because bank robberies do happen.
1:10.3	Elaria has been in banking 30 years, and she has actually been through four of them,
1:15.0	whole other story, but she doesn't want to show me the fault. Fair enough. She just describes it.
1:20.5	And alas, it does not have one of those big tourney things on the front.
1:24.0	It's not the size that I think you would expect, but it's functional and it's,
1:28.9	and it takes care of what we need. It's just a little vault. It is a little vault.
	...

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