Community banks proud to be boring

Community banks are tired of being tarred by the risky lending of some megabanks. “I was on vacation in California and this guy I had just met said, ‘So, traveling on that bailout money, huh?’ I didn’t find that very amusing,” Blake Heid of First Option Bank in Paola (which didn’t take any bailout money) told the New York Times. Other bankers note how their careful, “boring” approach to lending has been vindicated. “Banking should not be exciting,” a bank president in Jasper, Ind., told the Times. “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.”

7 Comments

  1. Regular
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 7:57 am | Permalink

    Haven’t really tried any of the local banks here in Kansas. Most people, like myself, pick a bank that has branches around the area, for convenience and consistency.

    Nothing wrong with small, hometown style banks, used them myself in the past. However, for the reasons stated above, a pragmatic approach suits me better now.

  2. Phantom
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 9:44 am | Permalink

    It was the big hybrid banks that Gramm passed legislation to create that brought this country and world to its knees.
    Something (actually alot) to be said for conventional banking and conventional regualtion of banks.

  3. bth
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 5:44 pm | Permalink

    I found the pragmatic approach directed me to the local boring bank. One which re-invests in the community instead of shipping their deposits to sub-prime loans in Nevada.

  4. Regular
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 6:33 pm | Permalink

    #
    bth
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 5:44 pm | Permalink

    I found the pragmatic approach directed me to the local boring bank. One which re-invests in the community instead of shipping their deposits to sub-prime loans in Nevada.
    ==================================
    You mean like the Intrust Arena? :D

  5. knkoenig
    Posted May 13, 2009 at 9:03 pm | Permalink

    I was talking with a banker last week whose local bank is doing just fine. He said sure, they missed out on some of the profit and excitement in the big real estate run up by not participating in the subprime loan fiasco, but now they’re not participating in the bankruptcy process. He’s more worried about coming government regulation than the economy right now.

  6. bth
    Posted May 14, 2009 at 3:36 pm | Permalink

    No Regular, I mean things like home mortgages and business loans.

  7. bth
    Posted May 14, 2009 at 3:38 pm | Permalink

    I was chatting with a loan officer there and she told me she could take me for a drive and show me her mortgages. Ordinary homes, ordinary families, good boring stable investments.