ABA Banking Journal - November 2008 - (Page 25)

Pass the Aspirin The Ultimate Headache comes with P.R. challenges and, sometimes, a green lining ack in the 1960s, when we had three television networks (which actually stopped broadcasting somewhere in the wee hours), news ran once in the evening and once in the morning, and not even sci-fi writers had thought of anything like the internet, Excedrin ran a long series of commercials about kinds of headaches. They all had numbers, and they were all bangaroo headbusters. (Sorry, our 100th Anniversary put us into a nostalgic mindset.) How good those old days—and those old headaches—must look to many of the country’s bankers now! As the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was in the midst of passing the House in early October, we asked Aspirin prescribers what they were hearing from their various publics and what they were doing to communicate in this period with customers, employees, shareholders, and others. Here’s what we heard. B Remedy 2 Lynda Messick, president and CEO, Community Bank Delaware, Lewes, Del., $59.8 million-assets We have seen a dramatic increase in new account activity in the past two weeks. I think this is a reflection of the confidence our market has in local community banks and concern for what they now feel they don’t know about big banks’ loan and investment portfolios. We have not experiNoncustomers enced any outflow of became customers as Community funds because of conBank Delaware stressed the value of cern for deposit insurdealing with a local institution. ance coverage of existing customers, but are seeing more of the new customers asking questions regarding maximizing that coverage. We spend a lot of time making sure staff is comfortable with the issues and understand how to explain FDIC coverage and work with each customer on a very individualized basis. Remedy 1 Mike Hannley, president and CEO, Bank of Tucson, Ariz., $179.7 million-assets. Bank of Tucson is part of Capitol Bancorp Ltd., a $4.2 billion-assets bank holding company with 64 community banks in 17 states. I have navigated these choppy waters in the past, and, although we cannot make the fear go away, we can mitigate it by “calming our customers’ nerves” by being professionals in banking. The past years of a relaxed dress code and atmosphere does not provide a high confidence level of “Are you keeping my money safe?” Thus, we OUT IN all dress professionally now; we train our complete staff on various FDIC variations to include all professional coverage; have the bank’s balance sheet “We all dress professionally now.” available to hand out; and respond to any and all questions with facts and figures. To date, we have increased deposits by $20 million, all new money. Our motto….KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. If you’d like to share your thoughts or ideas on this subject, please e-mail scocheo@sbpub.com. We’ll be looking for additional material on this for the website, www.passtheaspirinplus.com Remedy 3 Blair Hillyer, president and CEO, First National Bank, Dennison, Ohio, $167.7 million-assets This has been one of the more challenging periods in my 29-year career. I’m sure we have answered more questions regarding safety and soundness, FDIC coverage, the bailout bill, etc., than at any period in my history. Most of the questions have come from customers and employees. Only a few shareholders have actually come forward with questions. There has been a genuine sense of concern about the health of the industry and the most common question by far is, “What is going to happen?” Not many people in our area were in favor of the bailout bill passing, because they really didn’t understand what it meant to them personally. When we explained First National’s support for the bill and our reasons, most folks seemed satisfied. We cautioned our staff to proceed with “business as usual,” and that approach seemed to work. We refrained from any comments to the local media for fear of our comments being taken “out of ABA BANKING JOURNAL/NOVEMBER 2008 25 http://www.communitybankdelaware.com/index.asp http://www.communitybankdelaware.com/index.asp http://www.bankoftucson.com http://www.passtheaspirinplus.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ABA Banking Journal - November 2008

ABA Banking Journal - November 2008 Contents Editor's Column Banking 2.0: Credit, Banking's Essence, Set for Rethinking Snapshot: The Few, the Proud, the Banks that Can Raise Capital Will Strong and Simple Banks Inherit the Business? Back to the Future ABA Resources ABA Chairman's Position Farm Lenders Must Take Care When Lending in Indian Country Pass the Aspirin Into the Breach Adventures Across A Century What the Future Holds, Post Crisis Paul Volcker: A Financial Legend Still Speaks Strong Ed Yingling: Weathering the Storm Dick Kovacevich: "Boring" Banking to Dynamic Financial Services Jim Culberson: Community Banking: What has Changed and What Shouldn't Walter Shipley: How a Chemical Reaction Helped to Mold Today's JPMorgan Chase William Isaac: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead for Banks A Hundred Years from Our Pages Eight Tech Innovations that Brought Banks into 21st Century Bank Cherokee: Third Generaton Marks 100th Year The First National Bank of Altavista: Railroad Gave Birth to a Town, a Hope Chest, and a Bank Rosedales Federal Savings and Loan Association: How a Friendly Game of Cards Turned into a 100-Year Mutual New Washington State Bank: Cooking Up the Next 100 Years Mailbox Banker's Mart To Advertise/Index of Advertisers The Economy

ABA Banking Journal - November 2008

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