Corporate Social Responsibility

- Terry Turner, Pinnacle’s president and CEO

 

Our Commitment to Corporate Responsibility

Banking is a business of improvement. We work to help improve people’s finances, businesses and homes. We seek to help improve their standing in the world and the legacies they leave to their families. 

That daily work has a cumulative effect that reaches outside of the direct service we give to clients. It should help improve quality of life for an entire community and as many communities and people as we can. 

We at Pinnacle make intentional and strategic efforts to meet that responsibility. It’s baked into our reason for being, the “why” behind our firm and the vision that we drive toward:

• We strive to be the best financial services firm and the best place to work in the Southeast.
• We seek to make a significant positive impact on the communities we serve.
• Because we believe every single person deserves a great place to work and a great place to do business.
• Because we believe that people are important and that every individual makes a difference.

Our mission, vision and values are so much a part of our DNA that it can be challenging to quantify the impact we make. Volunteer projects, charitable donations, affordable housing investments and the like are easy to measure. It’s much more difficult when you have a firm made up of 3,400 difference makers all giving discretionary effort to making someone’s day brighter or helping a client or stranger in trouble.

Still, this report is our best effort at calculating the level of improvement we’ve brought to the lives of our stakeholders, our communities and the world at large and to more fully account for and contextualize the work that can’t be measured in numbers. 

This is how we worked to take everybody with us in 2023.

Download Pinnacle's 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.

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2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Pinnacle associates lived our values and carried out our commitments to corporate responsibility in 2023. Our policies, practices and actions for all stakeholders, from associates and clients to shareholders and community members, reflect that commitment.

Read below for highlights and download our full 2023 CSR Report.

Improving quality of life for our associates.

• Pinnacle has made huge strides in increasing the diversity of its associate base and leadership team since 2020. Important as that is, increasing demographic percentages is only one piece of work. Our dedicated DEI team, along with nearly 200 associates voluntarily serving on locally based DEI Councils, have also worked diligently to instill a sense of inclusion and belonging by engaging associates in events designed to inform, broaden perspectives and spur conversation. More than 300 such events took place firm-wide and at a local level in 2023, including a Pinnacle Forum for clients and associates and 180 “Connection Lunches” bringing together two or more associates from different backgrounds to share a meal and conversation. 

Improving quality of life in our communities.

• While it would be enough to tick the right regulatory boxes and meet the minimum requirements set forth for community lending, Pinnacle has developed a bold new vision for reaching historically underserved and underbanked communities. In redesigning our community lending program, we have increased the number of associates dedicated to this specialty while also pushing more responsibility, strategy and decisions to the local level. Now we move forward executing a new model for fighting for economic equity and shared prosperity with dedicated offices to serve as hubs for specialized expertise, products and partnerships. The financial professionals who feel called to serve this purpose are armed with customized financial products and an empathetic and trauma-informed approach to putting people on a path to financial success. 

Improving quality of life for everyone.

• Our responsibility to improve quality of life does not stop at the borders of our markets. Decisions and actions on our climate can have an impact on the world at large. As a major financial institution, we are committed to helping safeguard our environment and managing climate-related risks responsibly. Through the work of two separate Climate Sustainability Committees—one for the board of directors and another for management—Pinnacle is preparing to meet regulatory requirements and respond to the threats and opportunities related to climate change and the carbon transition. This includes potential financial risks to our own firm, Pinnacle’s direct environmental impact and the needs of our clients to mitigate risk and improve their business outcomes on matters of climate change and carbon transition. We are preparing to serve as advisors for our clients and connectors to industry experts who can help them manage a changing economy and reduce their own impact.