BALTIMORE — When the CFG Bank team moved into their new headquarters in the Baltimore Peninsula building, they had a view of the Key Bridge outside many of their windows. Just one week later, that view was forever altered.
"It's important to us that we continue to look out these windows every day and it remains a focus for us which keeps driving us," CFG Bank President Erik Howard said.
Like many businesses in the area, CFG Bank quickly made a donation to the recovery fund set up by the Baltimore Community Foundation.
But Howard wanted to do more. So did a lot of the bank's customers.
"We have clients all over the country and actually all over the world that have come to us and shown concern and interest and that was one of the things that really spurred us to want to do something and want to do more, because while it impacts Baltimore every day, there's folks all over the country that want to help in any way that they can," Howard said.
Today, CFG Bank rolled out a new initiative. Aptly named using the words you've heard the governor say many times since the disaster, the Maryland Tough Baltimore Strong Money Market Account allows customers to donate 0.05% of their accrued interest through the end of the year, and the bank will match up to $500,000 of it.
"So our hope and intent is that we can raise at least a million dollars," Howard said.
Accounts are available to both new and existing customers. The money will go directly to the Baltimore Community Foundation's recovery fund.
"Sometimes people don't know how to help and we wanted to try and create a program that was very easy and very simple,” Howard said. We’re hopeful that this actually is a little bit of a call to action for other organizations to figure out how their business can do something similar."
To apply for an account or for more information, click here.
