Former Harris Bank executive Edward Williams, 68, drives from his home in Elmhurst to Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood walks into the black-owned Illinois Service Federal and deposits $500. His father helped him open the account when he was 7, he’s been doing this every year since his birthday.

Williams said he has kept the account to support black-owned banks, but he knows that many of them "can't make the kind of loans the community needs right now."

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That's why, in one of the toughest regulatory environments in decades, Williams agreed to help former Harris colleague Matthew Roth start a minority-led bank in Bronzeville. If approved by regulators, the bank would try to grab customers from check-cashing stores and payday lenders, whose interest rates average 400 percent annually.