Anti-Woke Bank GloriFi to Shut Down

Can't believe they worked with a bank with "trans" in the name. /s

A rather large percentage of businesses catering to the maga / anti-woke / right-wing zealot customer base are pretty transparent attempts to grift their customers. Questionable products run by sketchy people that straight-up lie about their products and services.

I'm not familiar with this particular business, so maybe it wasn't blatantly grifting. Seems like it was run by someone who shouldn't be running a bank, pseudo or real, though.

It's out of Better Call Saul,yeah.

1. For trans people, it's absolutely a thing. If you need to be verified, your photo and name will often be different than government documents. Having a bank that understand this from the start is a key differentiator. Now, less than 1% of the world publicly identifies as trans or non-binary, but the numbers are increasing in younger generations and may, in an of itself, be a significant market differentiator.

2. LGBT people have a low level fear of having someone in customer service discriminate due to something with our gender presentation or other issue. While it's a smaller issue today than in the past, we all have a story about a friend who had an issue. With all else being equal; that is, if the bank itself is reliable, this is a key feature.

Now, I think there is a banking play for a single corporation to have multiple white labeled experiences, but the only successful one I know about not tied to an existing bank is Nubank.

So like, the problem is that normal banks will invest your money in causes you don’t want to support (like the fossil fuel industry). [0] So if you want your money to promote causes you care about, you need to find alternatives like this. Ideally, banks would let you choose where your money goes. But I don’t think that’s really a thing.

0: https://youtu.be/NJ7W6HFHPYs

> are there specific banking features that cater to LGBT individuals?

not deadnaming trans customers on the cards they have to give to people who know them by their new names is really good on its own and many banks simply will not allow customers to have different "display" and legal names.

Did the companies which refused to do business with apartheid South Africa have an ideological bent?

Would you have detested them?

What about the companies which continued to do business with apartheid South Africa? Did they have an ideological bent too?

> why not just be a bank serving all types of customers

If there's an under-served market then a business which focuses on that market's specific needs can be more profitable than one with multiple focuses.

In the link you can see some examples: "debit cards with customers’ chosen names, which aren’t always the same as what’s on their ID", "guided goals for gender-affirming procedures like top surgery and facial feminization", and family planning which doesn't assume heteronormativity.

As a different example of a bank started for an under-served population, USAA is focused on people who serve or served in the military, and their families. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA :

> USAA was founded in 1922 in San Antonio by a group of 25 U.S. Army officers as a mechanism for mutual self-insurance when they were unable to secure auto insurance because of the perception that they, as military officers, were a high-risk group.

They all have biases.

If they aren’t explicit about them they’ll act on them without warning. You might wake up one day and find that your business is not welcome any more. This happens regularly in the porn industry, banks simply refuse to work with them.

If I am woke, it’s good to know that a bank is anti-woke. Avoids surprises.

They are smart instead because they analyze VCs peculiar political preferences/bias and build a company which is guranteed to raise money.

It’s kinda like applying for govt grants or bidding for govt contracts. You read the document and then create a tailor made company to fit all the requirements

> or are there specific banking features that cater to LGBT individuals?

This question is answered at length in the article you link to. You could also just look at the bank's website: https://www.joindaylight.com

I don't know whether or not there's a large demand for these features among LGBTQ folks specifically, but it's not an inherently ridiculous idea.

My first "real" job was at a computer store in a small college town (doing ISP tech support). A competitor sprang up that called themself "Christian Computer Store". Needless to say, they didn't last long.

> Am I the only one that detests businesses with an ideological bent?

You're not the only one, but there are definitely a lot of people who like finding businesses with a similar ideological bent. Seeing a cross or an icthhys in the corner of business signs is fairly common, for instance—and has been for a long time.

From what I can gather, the endgame for these businesses is not to stand on their own two feet, but to simply acquire enough customers such that an established player snaps them up.

Most businesses don't want to do the hard work of chasing down licenses and permits. It seems to be all about a quick acquisition.

You aren't, but I actually like the idea generally. Capitalism is all about choice, and I'm absolutely fine using that as one of the reasons.

I mean, I think the inverse is weird. I don't see what's wildly different about "I'm just not gonna go there because I don't like how the chicken tastes" which no one ever has a problem with, but suddenly people get up in arms over "I'm not gonna go there because I don't like the CEO's stance on whatever."

Yay choice.

(oooh update. And these may be obvious descendants of things like "green book" businesses, aka those that were safe for black folks not too long ago)

I like that Penzey's Spices has a motto "season liberally". Their Facebook account includes anti-Republican screeds which appeal to me.

I also really like their products. I can say that I would not purchase their products if they had a right-wing bias equivalent to their left-wing bias. I don't patronize a number of businesses where the owners have made their right-wing bias prominent.

If you consider both equally distasteful, that makes sense. I assume that the owners of all of these businesses have made at least rough calculations how much they gain in customer loyalty, how much they lose in customers put off by it, and how that number compares to being what they consider true to themselves.

So I'm sure you're not the only one who detests that. But I imagine they've taken your views into account, as well as mine.

> why not just be a bank serving all types of customers

Yes, when will we finally get a bank like that.

Is the 20,000 existing banks that do that not enough for you?

Isn't "do not fuck with my money" basically the default in the consumer banking space? I've not seen a flicker of SJW stuff form any bank or credit union (until maybe you choose yourself to invest in ESG). "good app, and reasonable loan rates" is kind of what banks already compete on

What's the ROI on woke vs non-woke (or is it anti-woke).

Maybe Woke is trying a "virtuous" modus, non-woke is agnostic and anti-woke is the opposite of the Woke one?

Is there any studies around that?

>Seems like a weird thing to hang your hat on

That's identity politics :\

Isn't this not editorial but simply that outfits like this are now pay-to-play? I feel like I read somewhere that a couple thousand will get you an "article" in Forbes about your new thing, so you can say "we were in Forbes."

From another WSJ article - https://www.wsj.com/articles/glorifi-how-new-anti-woke-bank-...

"GloriFi defined itself in contrast to many big, established banks, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., which have in recent years pledged to consider environmental, social and governance, or ESG, principles in their businesses. Some lenders have cut ties with some corporate clients in the gun, coal and private prison industries."

It does seem like they've confused Hollywood with Wall Street. I mean, had the founders ever met a WS trader, for example? Okay, maybe not, plenty of people haven't. But there are magazines targeted to traders (I used to subscribe to one), someone could go read one of those. Not a lot of herbal bath bombs being advertised (or whatever the conservative fantasy would be of a "liberal" advertisement). Nope, fast cars, expensive liquor, and other items of the hedonistic lifestyle. I don't know which bucket "hedonism" falls into, but I doubt it's "woke".

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree on what the founders were thinking, but I'm still stumped on how they consider Wall Street to be liberal, and why their offered alternative had better features because "not woke".

> They're like the least political entity, caring only about money...

"caring only about money" is absolutely a political ideology. Although I agree that it's weird to label this as liberal, as it's an ideology that's usually closely aligned with conservatism.

It obviously cares about money, but it's definitely been leaning liberal for the past ten years. It started when Blankfein came out in support of gay marriage right after OWS. Blackrock with the ESG push.

> caring only about money

Seems to me this would make them the _most_ political entity.

Modern American right-wing politics has a major underlying grievance narrative: they’re ordinary people, a silent majority, who are being oppressed by the all-powerful Liberal Establishment and that will be the official message even if it’s something like a clear terms of service violation.

This is like catnip for a certain type of salesman hoping that they can try to get you to see their product as a way of asserting your identity while getting you to discount criticism. The WSJ has a certain editorial position but their financial reporters tend not to pull punches, and that’s not what you want if you’re not really better at anything but posturing.

Money is the basis of a ton of politics. See the different perspectives from socialists and capitalists.

Or maybe just don't run your company around unrelated political goals, unless you're a PAC.

If you mean liberalism in the original sense, it certainly does!

Capitalism is embraced by classical liberalism. Modern day "liberals" / progressivists have especially embraced American version of capitalism by using regulatory capture, basically coming up with 1 million and 1 ways to "make sure the consumer is protected" and then proceeding to capture the hell out of the regulatory framework to make sure anyone who disagrees with the regulation is called out as someone who wants people to get hurt / someone who wants to let industry oppress us. Meanwhile they rake in the profits while locking out competitors.