A US-based financial services and bank holding company. Its subsidiary Citizens Bank has provided credit and loans to private prison corporation CoreCivic.
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is a retail and commercial banking company headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. As of 2021, Citizens Financial Group operated approximately 1,000 Citizens Bank branches in 11 states, employed 17,584 people, and reported an annual revenue of $6.9 billion.
Citizens Financial has been identified as one of the major financial institutions supporting private prison and immigrant detention companies. Citizens Bank is a member of a syndicate of banks that has extended hundreds of millions of dollars in revolving lines of credit and term loans to CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison and immigrant detention companies in the U.S. CoreCivic relies on banks and financial institutions to fund their operations and expansion into additional carceral industries.
In 2018, CoreCivic entered into a $1 billion credit agreement with a syndicate of banks that included Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Fifth Third Bank, First Tennessee Bank (now First Horizon Bank), JPMorgan Chase, Pinnacle Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, SunTrust Bank (now Truist Financial Corporation), and Synovus Bank. Replacing CoreCivic's previous $900 million credit facility, this agreement consists of an $800 million revolving line of credit and a $200 million term loan. Through one of its subsidiaries, Citizens Bank, National Association (CBNA), Citizens Financial Group acted as a joint syndicate manager and lender in the deal, committing $96 million and $24 million, respectively, to CoreCivic's revolving line of credit and term loan. The agreement is set to expire in 2023.
In 2020, Citizens Bank became the administrative agent for CoreCivic's 2018 line of credit, succeeding Bank of America, which announced in 2019 that it would exit its relationships with private prison companies. In this role, Citizens Bank secured CoreCivic's loans and credit limit and acted as liaison between CoreCivic, a group of CoreCivic subsidiaries, and the bank syndicate.
As of 2021, Citizens Bank has made no public statement indicating that it will sever its business relations with CoreCivic.
Other Controversies
Following a public pressure campaign led by Shame on Citizens and other community groups, in 2017 Citizens Bank ended its financing of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.