Spare Change: NationsBank's S.C. Switchboard Even Busier After Switch

Community bankers beware: NationsBank might have your number.

Actually, NationsBank has just one community bank's number, and innocently so. In a unintended quirk of the area code changes sweeping the land, the former main phone number of Carolina First Corp. now leads callers to the main switchboard at NationsBank's South Carolina headquarters in Columbia.

A call to Carolina First's headquarters in Greenville, S.C. - using the number listed in the 1995 Nelson's Directory of Investment Research - was indeed met with the twang of a NationsBank operator.

On May 1, Carolina got a new area code, 864, in front of its number, 255-7900. That number, with the old 803 area code, was given over to NationsBank in Columbia.

Mary Gentry, treasurer of Carolina First, said a few telephone callers have been a bit confused by the switch. The bank did a mailing to notify people about the change.

"The folks at NationsBank, they've been real polite in setting them straight," she said.

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Does the fact that just 45 out of the 9,000 or so community banks in the United States were represented at a well-publicized seminar on the new breed of banking competition mean community bankers aren't worried about competition?

Perhaps, but it also could be that community bankers are too busy dealing with the competition to attend another seminar on the topic.

In any event, only about 130 bankers and directors, from just 45 banks, attended a two-day seminar last week entitled "Preparing to Compete," held at the Marriot's Camelback Inn resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Scottsdale's golf scene wasn't enough of an attaction?)

The seminar, co-sponsored by the Independent Bankers Association of America and Bank Director magazine, was designed to examine the myriad competitive challenges facing community banks in the future.

But one banker at the seminar speculated that many community banks have been lulled into a false sense of security by their glowing financial performance of late.

"I think some of the bankers who don't come to these kinds of seminars aren't coping with reality," said Gregory Stafford, president and chief executive of North Cascades National Bank in Chelon, Wash. "They haven't come to their senses."

Even so, IBAA officials said they were pleased with the turnout, noting that this is the first time the trade group has held a seminar with such a broad theme. - Joanna Sullivan, Jonathan D. Epstein

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