Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin speaks during her “State of the Chicago Treasurer’s Office” address on Monday.

Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin wants to widen the city’s investment pool to include an array of smaller-community-based banks as part of an effort to juice loans in neighborhoods that have been overlooked by national banks, she said Monday. 

Making it easier for small banks to hold city assets is one outcome Conyears-Ervin hopes to draw from a forthcoming “municipal depositories task force,” she told The Daily Line in advance of a “State of the Chicago Treasurer’s Office” address Monday morning. The treasurer earlier this year said the task force, which would include Comptroller Reshma Sonni and members of the City Council, could devise strategies to upend entrenched patterns of systemic racism in the baking industry.