Door to new business: a check courier service.

Michigan's Franklin Bank is redefining what it means to be a "full-service bank."

Business checking customers that need to make a deposit, but don't want to fight the day's winter blizzard, or are simply too busy to break from their desks don't have to. The Southfield-based bank says it will come to them -- in an armored truck.

Last month, Franklin rolled out door-to-door banking for new business checking customers using a courier to pick up check deposits. Existing customers will be able to use the service at the beginning of the year.

An armored truck collects noncash deposits from customers' businesses and delivers them to the bank's main branch. Each pickup costs $5. The charge can be offset depending on the balance of the account.

The program came about after account executives who were hooting it door-to-door in search of new business found people saying that they would "love to bank with Franklin... except you're too far away," said Lisa Hudy, a spokeswoman with the bank.

Franklin Bank management said the pickups are more cost effective 'than building new branches.

Gerald Lewis, who leaves in January after 20 years as Florida's banking comptroller, also will step down as chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors next month.

Mr. Lewis, who is the nation's only elected banking official, was stunned in his bid for reelection by Republican challenger Bob Milligan, a retired Marine general with neither banking nor political experience.

At the regulators group, Mr. Lewis will be replaced by Jim Hansen, Nebraska's director of banking and finance. Wyoming banking commissioner Sue Mecca will become chairman-elect.

Chairmanship of the group is a high-profile position. The chairman represents the nation's 54 state banking regulators before Congress, and is also a member of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's state liaison committee.

They may not be as hot as baseball superstar Barry Bonds' trading card, but police dog cards are making the rounds among kids in Nebraska.

In recent months, the Nebraska Bankers Association has given bankers thousands of trading cards featuring a police dog, Trey 237K. The bankers in turn have given the cards to school-children as a way to bring cops and kids closer together.

Donations from the bankers group enabled the State Patrol to purchase Trey, a 63-pound Belgian Malinois named after Trey Alberts, a former University of Nebraska football star. Trained in drag interdiction, tracking, and officer protection, he already has compiled impressive statistics just seven months into his police career. Trev's keen nose has led police officers to seize 112 pounds of cocaine along with $280,000 in drug money and 60 pounds of marijuana.

-- Compiled by Barbara F. Bronstien and Bill Atkinson

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