PayThink

Have you ever had a member sit across the desk from you because they're finances are a bloody mess thanks to self-inflicted wounds? What you really want to do is reach across the desk and slap them upside the head. How could they not see all this coming?

Editor's note: the following letter to the editor was written in response to news of a bill to impose the Community Reinvestment Act on CUs (CU Journal Daily, March 11) and a story on NCUA being sued over the Norlarco participations (CU Journal Daily, March 10)

As the regulatory restructuring debate heats up, two financial consultants are proposing a plan for defining and controlling systemic risk that serves as yet another example of how to make use of laws, rather than agencies, to temper the growth of large financial institutions.

Bankers and small business owners clashed during a Senate hearing on small business lending on Thursday, as the entrepreneurs complained of scarce credit while bankers insisted they had not cut back on lending.

The final day of SourceMedia´s Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium came down hard on the lifeblood of banking in the new era: deposits. Fittingly, the weather metaphors that have been the go-to descriptor of all that´s gone wrong continued. "The deposit business is more important than ever but there will continue to be some real headwinds," says Sherief Meleis, managing director at Novantas.

Looking for a systemic risk regulator that isn´t limited by inevitable human folly? Several options that bypass growing concerns over the potential effectiveness of the Federal Reserve Board´s systemic risk oversight are floating around Washington. They involve strengthening laws, not agencies.

Citigroup probably has the most reputation problems of any still-standing bank in America, and boy do they know it. But the bank is intent on rehabilitating its image in a hurry; Citi´s North American Marketing Director Paul Kadin recently conducted 27 focus groups around the country examining how consumers feel about Citi, and big banks overall.

After TCF Financial CEO Bill Cooper's Sunday night speech excoriating regulators, Congressmen, MBAs, borrowers and, yes, some bankers, as catalysts for the collapse of banking and the global economy, attendees at American Banker's Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium found it refreshing to hear U.S. Bancorp Vice Chairman Richard Hartnack take personal blame for the financial crisis on Monday morning. (Just after he said, "Neener, neener, I told you so!)

Deanna Oppenheimer, CEO of Barclays retail banking operations, with 1700 branches and 15 million customers, knows the reality that "banker bashing is the parlor game of the day." But she realized things had reached a height of media hysteria when a commercial banker who managed a corporate account about to be foreclosed found a tabloid photographer outside his kitchen window with a telephoto lens, getting a close-up of him giving his kids cereal for breakfast.

If you turn off CNBC for five minutes you remember that there´s actual banking going on, with leaders engaged in the day-to-day business of making loans and taking deposits. Deanna Oppenheimer, CEO of Barclays UK retail banking division, is happy to talk about the boring banker stuff behind her turnaround of the underperforming retail operation, a strategy that resulted in a division that now contributes more than 20 percent of Barclays' profits, where employees are more engaged than ever and customer satisfaction is at an all-time high.