For more than a decade, Teresa Esser was a prominent Milwaukee angel investor, funding local companies including several that have been acquired in successful exits.
But after the August 2016 unrest in Sherman Park brought the city's social inequities into the spotlight, Esser began looking for ways to make more of an impact.
"Being an angel investor wasn't enough... it wasn't making a dent in Milwaukee," said Esser, the former managing director of Milwaukee's Silicon Pastures Angel Investment Network.
Late last year, Esser left Silicon Pastures to join Rallius Inc., a new digital-only banking platform solely focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives. Its parent company is ESG Financial Corp. and it will partner with existing banks to offer checking and savings accounts.
As a mission-based banking platform, Rallius will invest its deposit dollars in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which include transitioning to a low-carbon economy and supporting women and minority-owned businesses, according to the company.
Rallius will also help solve what Esser calls "the problem of the 85-cent dollar," which describes the disadvantage that people who don't have bank accounts could face if they, for example, had to pay 10% of a paycheck to a check-cashing service and 5% for a money order to pay a bill.
"There's this idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but there are a lot of people in our city whose bootstraps are 15% shorter," Esser said.
In metropolitan Milwaukee, 5.9% of households were unbanked in 2019, compared with 5.4% of all U.S. households, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Rallius was co-founded by Geeta Sankappanavar, Esser's longtime friend since the early 1990s when they met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sankappanavar reached out to Esser with the idea after the Black Lives Matter protests in summer 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
"If you really want to make a difference, why don't you start by making a difference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," Esser recalled telling Sankappanavar. "If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere."
The company is doing a pilot program with the Rotary Club of Milwaukee, of which Esser is a member. It's also pursuing pilot programs and partnerships with other Milwaukee organizations, Esser said.
The Rallius website is live and has a waitlist. The company hopes to launch its first account — a high-interest certificate of deposit — later this year, Esser said.
Esser is Rallius's managing director of community banking. The company's CEO of community and retail banking is Nuvyn Peters. Aside from Esser in Milwaukee, Rallius has team members in Wichita, Kansas, and Calgary, Alberta, in Canada.
Silicon Pastures, Esser's former venture, still exists but isn't making new investments. Many of its members reorganized to form Milwaukee Venture Partners, a new angel investing group of which Esser is a member.
