Community bankers worry that big banks will use complex services to woo away their customers. A visit I made to a Bank of America branch in Summit, N.J., my hometown, may cast some light on such fears.
I wanted to learn whether small banks should be concerned about big ones coming in with brokerage services. To investigate the question I introduced myself to the man in the branch whose business card identified him as a Quick & Reilly "financial service representative."
I told him I was a community bank columnist and set up a luncheon date with him and the manager of this busy and important branch. (The branch, which was still branded "Fleet" when I visited, had been Summit Bank's headquarters office before Fleet bought Summit. Quick & Reilly is now Banc of America Investment Services, by the way.)
The rep, it turned out, had spent 18 years in the casino industry in Atlantic City, working on the floor as a good-will ambassador, ombudsman, and general troubleshooter. But deciding that he did not want to do that for the rest of his life, he applied for this specific job at Fleet.
Quick & Reilly didn't hire him; the branch manager did. She grilled him thoroughly, they both said. She told me that one big reason for hiring him was his customer-relations experience in Atlantic City; she had thought that would be helpful for a bank platform officer.
The training that the bank gave him included what he needed to pass several securities exams. (When we met he was still taking courses to become a full-fledged broker.) But his real job was to know enough about estate planning, trust, insurance, credit, mutual funds, variable annuities, and investment management for private clients to take care of anyone who came into the office. He was supposed to interest bank customers in B of A's broader services and to interest those who used such services in bank-specific products like home equity loans.
This rep is on the platform all day, ready to help current clients or new people sent over from the front-door bullpen that has been set up to welcome everyone who enters the branch. He has to be available at all times, even at lunch. (He apologized for taking his cell phone to our lunch.) He attends bank staff meetings so he can know what is happening and how it affects his customers.
What all this means for community bankers cuts two ways.
On the one hand, it shows a giant bank competing precisely where small banks are supposed to be strongest: at personal service. That should be a wake-up call.
On the other hand, I left the meeting feeling that this rep and the powerful bank behind him can do nothing for their customers that any community bank cannot, if it wants to. Virtually every community bank has people-oriented employees with a modicum of securities training and the willingness to gain more.
