ILCs, Mortgage Reform on ICBA Chief's Mind

Cynthia Blankenship, who will become the chairman of the Independent Community Bankers of America today, was once an aspiring archeologist.

But after graduating from high school, she took a summer job as a teller that would prove to be life-altering. Since then she has changed banks several times, but not careers.

“Any position you hold at a bank, you come in contact with customers daily, and you help them,” Ms. Blankenship said. “It’s doing something worthwhile. It’s doing something that matters.”

Roughly a decade after that fateful summer, she started Bank of the West in Irving, Tex., with her husband, H. Gary Blankenship, a former examiner with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

She is now the vice chairman and chief operating officer of the bank’s $250 million-asset parent, Greater Southwest Bancshares Inc. Mr. Blankenship is the chairman and chief executive officer.

Ms. Blankenship said she moved into her current role at Greater Southwest in 2006, so she would have more time to work with state and national trade groups. She chaired the Independent Bankers Association of Texas five years ago and remains on the board.

As the ICBA chairman, her top priorities involve what she considers unfair competition for traditional banks and thrifts. She wants to work to tax credit unions, stop the Farm Credit System from expanding its lending authority, and prevent industrial loan charters from being given to retailers such as Home Depot Inc.

“You’ve seen” what Home Depot has done “to the local hardware store,” Ms. Blankenship said. “Just imagine if that was banking.”

Another issue of concern to her is mortgage reform. She said any new regulations prompted by the credit crisis should spare community banks.

“I think reform of the nonregulated mortgage producers would be good,” she said. “But by and large, community banks were not involved in subprime lending. We didn’t cause the crisis and shouldn’t be penalized for something we didn’t do.”

Those familiar with Ms. Blankenship say she is just the person to tackle policy goals for the banking industry.

Steve Scurlock, executive vice president of government relations with the Texas trade group, said he has seen Ms. Blankenship in action on Capitol Hill, having gone to Washington with her at least 25 times since the early 1990s.

“It is really easy to talk about stuff. But she is always ready to pack up, go to D.C., and act,” Mr. Scurlock said.

With her “magnetic personality,” Ms. Blankenship carries on compelling discussions with legislators and lobbyists, he said.

Ms. Blankenship said her strategy in Washington has been to forge relationships with lawmakers before their support is needed.

That helps ensure “an open door” later, she said. “They now know who we are and understand what community banks do. That is much more effective than if you have to cold call.”

Ms. Blankenship will be sworn in as this year's ICBA chairman during a ceremony today at the trade group's annual convention in Orlando, Fla.

Scott Heitkamp, the president and CEO of the $157-million asset ValueBank Texas, a Corpus Christi unit of First International Bancshares Inc., said Ms. Blankenship’s passion for community banking and her motivational leadership make her “a perfect fit” for the ICBA job.

“She has a ‘Let’s get things done’ personality” said Mr. Heitkamp, who has known Ms. Blankenship through the Texas trade group for about two decades. “She is always putting the industry first.”

Ms. Blankenship began her banking career as a teller at Farmers and Merchants State Bank of Krum, a northern Texas town with a population of 500. She had planned to become an archeologist back then, and she did get a taste of antiquity in her job.

“We did hand posting of accounts and used hand-cranked adding machines,” she said. “Everything was a manual process. There was no technology.”

She continued to work at banks through college, eventually coming around to the idea that she had found her calling.

“I decided I would be working my entire life, so I might as well do something I enjoy,” Ms. Blankenship said.

She and her husband, then an OCC examiner, met at an industry event in 1980 and got married a few years later.

When they founded Bank of the West in 1986, “we started with one branch and 10 shareholders,” Ms. Blankenship said. “We were profitable within the first year and have never lost money.”

Today it has eight branches and is about to move into a 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Grapevine. (Ms. Blankenship said a freeway expansion will claim its Irving headquarters soon.)

The family business also has made room for one of the couple’s three daughters. Lisa Blankenship is Bank of the West’s vice president in charge of accounting.

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