Zions Unit Puts Women at Both Sides of Desk

At Zions Bancorp's original Salt Lake City branch, the men are in frames on the wall, the women at desks working.

Surrounded by oil portraits of past bank presidents, the female staff members provide insurance, trust and investments, lending, and other business services at a banking center for women.

Targeting women as customers is a trend in the financial services industry; some of the biggest companies, including Merrill Lynch & Co. and OppenheimerFunds, have been leaders.

But the Zions center, which opened Aug. 1, is unique; its account officers are women and for the most part work for women.

"We were doing it before-we just weren't being effective," said Diana E. Kirk, a Zions senior vice president who started the women's program. "We had programs scattered everywhere."

Ms. Kirk, who runs private banking for the $8 billion-asset banking company, said the idea of having a banking center for women is like having one for wealthy people. "The reality is we offer the same services systemwide," Ms. Kirk said, and male bankers are available too. "But this is for the client who may need some extra help or may feel more comfortable dealing with another woman."

A handful of "women's" banking companies popped up 20-odd years ago but later changed to gender-neutral names. Targeting women as one of many customer segments, though, is more sustainable, said Navtej S. Nandra, vice president of the financial services group of Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc., New York.

Mr. Nandra said the same rationale is behind private or immigrant banking: Clients see everything as set up for their specific needs. "That may or may not be entirely true, but it's positioning," he said. "You'd better have superior value; otherwise, people see through you very quickly. Consumers are smart, especially women."

To manage Zions' Women's Financial Group, Ms. Kirk recruited a local commercial banker, Lori Chillingworth, from KeyCorp.

Ms. Chillingworth said her group is set up for women who prefer to work with women.

Some women are leery-because of stereotypes and firsthand experience- of dealing with men in business, she said.

"When women walk into a mechanic's shop or a car dealership, they don't know for sure if everything they're telling them is the truth," Ms. Chillingworth said. "They think the salesperson doesn't think they know."

She has been asked, "Don't you think that you're doing more harm than good by saying women need special help?" She responds that Zions' center helps women who feel "intimidated."

The group is also for women whose loan applications need a second look. Joan E. Jones, owner of Bidwell Inc., a concrete repair and paving contractor based in South Jordan, Utah, applied for a loan with Zions this year when her $1 million company had a growth spurt that created to a cash- flow crunch.

Ms. Jones said she was rejected on her first application but was referred to the Women's Financial Group. "I was just a tad offended," said Ms. Jones, who had started the company to support her five children. "I would have thought I didn't need special consideration. But my hand was out, so I took what I could get."

Despite her initial surprise that such a group existed, she said targeting women makes sense. "Without that focus ... it would be hard," she said. "Women don't look as good on paper as men who have been in business for 20 years."

Ms. Jones added that it really didn't matter whether her banker was a man or a woman, as long as he or she looked at the "company's potential and background, and who I was as a person."

Several banks, including BankAmerica Corp. and Chase Manhattan Corp., are establishing groups to provide services to women, including seminars on investing and other financial services, as they fend off nonbank competitors.

"Banks used to push more product and were not really gearing to the needs of specific customer segments," said Linda M. Chase, a managing consultant at Towers Perrin, New York.

Such segments are "not quite on the private banking level, but they still need products and services that aren't mass-marketed," Ms. Chase said. "The women's thing is taking it a step further."

Some clients say it is about time banks catered to them. "I don't think women in the past have been taken seriously by their bankers," said Shelly DeProto, owner of Caffe Molise, a four-year-old restaurant that had about $500,000 in revenues last year in Salt Lake City.

A regular at her restaurant-Kathy Hillis, director of community affairs at First Security Corp.-referred her to the banking company's women's program. An account officer there got business insurance for her, as well as health coverage and a 401(k) plan for her 15 employees. "If they don't pay attention to women coming up, they're going to miss out," Ms. DeProto said.

Many such programs address women's perceptions of credit bias.

"Maybe the perception with women is that we don't lend to them as readily, whether that's true or not. Perception is reality in lots of cases," said Ms. Hillis, who started First Security's women's program in April.

In contrast to Zions' banking center approach, First Security is marketing to women throughout its system. Special events include a meeting with the Beardstown Ladies Investment Club.

There are side benefits to such efforts.

Ms. Kirk said a regulator recently told her the Zions program would be part of a Community Reinvestment Act exam. But she said compliance played no part in its creation.

"If we looked at it just from a CRA perspective, then we cheapen what we're trying to do and we cheapen the value we place on our women clients," she said.

Ms. Chillingworth said the emergence of women entrepreneurs in Utah, many of them Mormon stay-at-home mothers creating extra income, is a key reason for the program. Whether women will endure as a market segment is unclear. "I hate to say we hope we work ourselves out of job, but hopefully the need might not be as much as it is right now," she said.

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