ABA Community Bankers Meet with Mnuchin, Top Treasury Leaders

From left: Burgess, Wagner, Husic, Jenks, Bentley, Hanes, Andersen, Hermann and Savarese.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his leadership team today hosted a group of community bankers to discuss unnecessary and outdated regulations that are hindering economic growth and making it more difficult for banks to serve their customers and communities. The 16 bankers participating represented both the American Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America. They discussed the importance of the community bank business model, ensuring regulation is tailored to institutions’ unique characteristics, mortgage finance reform and the ability of community banks to raise capital, among other topics.

“Highly prescriptive and ill-tailored rules are making it much harder for community banks to make loans to creditworthy borrowers and otherwise serve their clients and communities,” said ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols, who participated in the meeting. “We thank Treasury for listening to a wide variety of perspectives as they conduct a careful review of the broad range of financial laws and regulations — an examination that we hope will allow banks to go even further in driving our economy forward.”

This meeting comes less than a month after several community bank leaders met with President Trump at the White House. Trump made clear during that meeting that the vitality of community banking is a top priority for his administration.

ABA Executive Committee members taking part were Chairman Dorothy Savarese, chairman, president and CEO of Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, Orleans, Mass.; Chairman-Elect Ken Burgess, chairman of FirstCapital Bank of Texas, Midland; Treasurer George Hermann, president and CEO of Windsor Federal Savings, Windsor, Conn.; Government Relations Council Chairman Stan Jenks, president and CEO of Security Savings Bank, Monmouth, Ill.; and Nichols.

Other participants representing ABA members were Leslie Andersen, president and CEO of Bank of Bennington, Bennington, Neb.; Stacey Bentley, president and CEO of Community Bank and Trust, Waterloo, Iowa; Shan Hanes, president and CEO of First National Bank of Elkhart, Elkhart, Kan.; Patti Husic, president and CEO of Centric Bank, Harrisburg, Pa.; and Bill Wagner, chairman, president and CEO of Northwest Bancshares, Warren, Pa.

Representing ICBA at the meeting were Jeff Dick of MainStreet Bank in Fairfax, Va.; Steve Handke of Union State Bank in Everest, Kan.; Jack Hartings of Peoples Bank Co. in Coldwater, Ohio; Ronald Paul of EagleBank in Bethesda, Md.; Mark Schroeder of German American Bancorp in Jasper, Ind.; Sam Vallandingham of First State Bank in Barboursville, W.Va.; and Noah Wilcox of Grand Rapids State Bank in Grand Rapids, Minn.