A letter from our Chairman of the Board
2021 was another successful year for Flagstar as we posted one of our best years ever financially and made significant strides in supporting our communities and advancing our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
A highlight was the Outstanding rating we received from our primary regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for our community reinvestment record. This is a high honor and coveted recognition of our efforts to help ensure the flow of credit to low- and moderate-income families. Another point of pride for us was our second consecutive recognition as a noteworthy company for diversity by DiversityInc.
We’re proud, too, of our CEO Action for Racial Equity Fellows who have identified their areas of focus and are now engaged in advocacy. These are Flagstar employees whose passion for social justice has earned them two-year fellowships to help advance racial equity for Black Americans through public policy. In 2021, Flagstar’s fellows dug in and started their advocacy on two issues: the digital divide and the expansion of economic opportunity through community development financial institutions.
The digital divide was already on our company’s radar, and we followed up with a $1 million contribution to a Detroit-based nonprofit for a pilot program to create high-speed broadband internet in Inkster, Mich. We hope to attract funding to deploy the pilot nationwide so that underserved communities everywhere can get connected.
To promote homeownership, we continued our flagship programs of down payment assistance, specialty mortgages, and financial literacy for potential homeowners. We also continued our 35-year history of giving back to our communities. In 2021, our overall charitable giving was almost $5 million, including grants from the Flagstar Foundation and funds for community reinvestment programs and event sponsorships. A full 88% of foundation grants were directed to organizations that serve diverse populations.
Inside Flagstar, we kept diversity, equity, and inclusion front and center in many ways. In 2021, we launched a pilot for mentoring circles to help our employees navigate their careers and gain access to advice, sponsorship, guidance, and other support. We continued our monthly Let’s Talk About It series. We also held our third DE&I symposium and Day of Understanding as well as our fifth Pride Month and Black History Month. From Diwali, to Juneteenth, to the Lunar New Year, we enthusiastically celebrated the diversity of our employees throughout the year.
On the environmental front, we completed an inventory of our greenhouse gas emissions as our first step in understanding our environmental footprint. With this baseline, we can now start the real work of setting targets for reduction.
I’m proud to share with you the good things Flagstar accomplished for its communities in 2021 and to report our progress in our DE&I journey—all against the backdrop of another year of financial success. None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support of Flagstar employees, including the more than 5,700 hours they volunteered to help make it happen.
Sandro DiNello
Chairman of the Board