UNTAMED, UNRULY AND UNSTOPPABLE?!?

"There's a way to do it better—find it." ~Thomas Edison

"Success is on the far side of failure." ~Thomas Watson Sr.


Does the title above accurately describe your professional style? Or that of your Team? Your Organization?

Why not?

Much has been written and refreshed recently regarding the unfortunate passing of the iconic Steve Jobs. Does your own leadership experience and outlook embrace the passion for your Organization's mission that was evident as Steve Jobs spoke to those 2005 Stanford graduates? Do YOU fondly recall your own failings with the same enthusiasm that Steve Jobs exuded when describing his ouster from Apple ten years after its founding?

Are you failing enough? Are you encouraging your Team's members to fail more often?

The financial services industry continues to evolve at breakneck speed. Online bill payment, account aggregation, bank-to-bank online transfers are now "old" technologies. Single location institutions have launched mobile banking. As soon as your Public Relations Team can push a piece out to PRNewswire, a dozen other competitors or peers simultaneously issue similar independent press releases.

Despite infinite media attention and blogs devoted to the "rise of regulation amidst Dodd-Frank" and all of the other horror stories about "new fees" that abound, a select few of your competitors are conceiving, testing, retooling, retesting and preparing to launch tomorrow's customer-friendly product or service. What are YOU doing to lead your Organization to the front of that cadre? Is your Board of Directors inspired...or mired in risk aversion?

Every merger has an acquirer and an acquired (regardless of how the Communications Team attempts to portray it). Yesterday's mergers were often about growing the footprint, expanding the brand to new markets, leveraging complementary channels for optimizing profits and controlling redundant costs.

Is your Organization untamed? Are you confident enough in your professional Team to accord them a percentage of their time to be unruly enough to identify, develop and launch the products and services that will satisfy tomorrow's customers/members?

Your Organization, under your leadership, will either be the acquirer--or the acquired--in tomorrow's merger. You will either be seeking to acquire an institution through which your Organization can channel its innovative products, services and servant leaders to WOW! new customers/members...or you will be explaining to your employees why many of them will need to seek employment elsewhere?

YOU are the Leader that everyone in your Organization is looking up to.
Are you the Leader that everyone in your Industry is looking up to and attempting to emulate?

If not, then perhaps it's time you moved out of the way to allow that Leader to emerge...that Leader who will ensure that your Organization and each of its fully-invested Teams becomes and remains: UNSTOPPABLE!

REGULATORS, AUDITORS AND EXAMINERS --OH MY!

Q: What do you get if you cross a wild, ferocious, man-eating tiger with an internal auditor?
A: A dull tiger.


OK, by a show of hands, how many of you are excited when you receive the audit engagement letter or regulatory exam notification? Do you mark the dates on your calendar with the same enthusiasm with which you block off your two-week mid-winter Caribbean vacation?

Given what I've observed over the years, I think not. I am here to suggest that we can and should embrace those individuals entrusted with auditing and examining our Organizations--and, no, I have not lost my good sense.

I recall my days as a bank auditor, when my arrival on site appeared to suck the joy right out of the room. Mind you, in hindsight I can humbly admit that the process owners certainly knew their craft far better and more realistically than my well-studied audit manuals could have prepared me. And while I and many of my fellow auditors throughout history have long sought to conduct dispassionate audits with collegial objectivity, management frustration often bubbled just below the surface, bursting forth as certain numbered comments touched unforeseen raw nerves.

The passing of years witnessed my migration away from the internal audit function toward the risk management function via a brief passage through a regulatory agency. At each stage, I tried to bring all perspectives together into one cohesive approach to audits and regulatory exams. I do not believe that I am alone in this regard, as many Leaders more experienced than me have found themselves reconciling multiple facets of the audit/exam process throughout our careers.

What I find fascinating is how many otherwise well-balanced, seasoned Leaders bristle at the notion that they could learn from--let alone seriously consider--the noted exceptions or discussed observations during an operational audit or regulatory examination. The very same Leaders who would pay consultants handsomely to deconstruct and reorganize entire Divisions within the Organization, or who engage high-end vendors to supplant legacy technology with enterprise solutions, will balk at the suggestion that a professional committed to assuring the safety and soundness of the Organization would be any less committed to objective and sustainable improvement.

I am certainly not suggesting that we butter up, befriend or brown nose the independent auditor or government regulator charged with overseeing the thorough examination of our Organizations. I am suggesting that we, as Leaders, owe our Organizations a fiduciary duty to approach the audit/exam with an open mind and a willingness to accept that--despite our best efforts--our Teams could be performing one or more functions with greater care. Unlike the consultants and vendors we hire, our auditors and regulators are not primarily driven by a profit motive or to extract repeat business.

My first-hand experience with administering audits, especially those supported by early warning systems, was to (1) gain a better understanding of the operational processes; (2) identify remedies that had been made to previously-identified exceptions; and (3) offer best practice guidance and foreshadowing of regulatory effects that would impact the process owner's area of responsibility. Our Audit Team certainly wasn't there to one-up management or disrupt well-functioning operations.

On the Risk Management side, despite others' tendencies to view regulatory examinations as declarations of war against the various Organizations, I sought to assume the best intentions. Though it comes as a shock to some, I generally received what I had assumed: professional auditors/examiners (a) conducting objective assessments; (b) examining and documenting the sufficiency of mitigating controls; and (c) offering improvements supported either by industry best practices or foretellings of regulatory rule making. And although I had observed other Leaders come to blows in heated battle with examiners, I never found myself in that adversarial position.

We will all certainly continue to look forward to that two-week mid-winter Caribbean jaunt with much more excited anticipation than any audit or regulatory exam, but as Leaders we can certainly adopt a more collegial and consultative approach to those periodic and foreseeable occasions. You won't be disappointed.

THE CONSULTANT WHO CAME TO DINNER

"Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company." ~Scott Adams (Creator of Dilbert)


Scott Adams' quote reminds me of a conversation I could imagine having with a Leader who is experiencing unacceptable levels of turnover among high-quality employees in a highly-competitive market:

HERB: "Cris, how can I improve my retention of my key Leaders? Seems like I've got a revolving door with our competition and the hiring/training costs are killing our budget."

ME: "Simple, Herb! Make them consultants--then they'll NEVER leave."

Seriously, have you ever felt like Bette Davis after six months with Sheridan Whiteside ["The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1942)] when your consultant remains AND your project remains unfinished. I have certainly overstated the case for hyperbole, but there's probably not one among us who hasn't shared at least one experience of the "permanent consultant." Some people just don't know when to say good-bye.

Consultants can serve many useful and legitimate purposes for your Organization.

• There are projects and initiatives that require a special expertise that you don't retain in-house.
• You partner with a vendor to convert to a new enterprise financial platform for which the vendor provides the consulting services.
• I am also a firm believer that some organizational change initiatives, particularly those involving massive shifts in leadership, training and development; or restructuring that involves downsizing, are appropriate times to employ an outside contractor to lessen anxiety and retain good will among the permanent Leadership and Teams.
• Finally, there are those instances where you simply cannot be "a prophet in your own village." Whereupon, an outside contractor can deliver firm--sometimes uncomfortable--messages with a compassionate detachment that internal Leaders may not be able to effectively foster.
• ...and of course I'd like to hear YOUR additional examples.

So you've got a project initiative that your Leadership Team has concluded will best be handled by employing a contract consultant.
YOU will be held accountable for the outcome, for better or for worse.
How best to proceed?

1. List the particulars with clarity in a Contract of sufficient complexity. If you can keep it to one or two pages, great! (If your Attorneys get paid by the word, it may be longer.) Include at a minimum:
• Define the successful outcome that signals the project (and, hence, the contract) have been completely fulfilled.
• Completion Date and any concrete Milestone Dates that must be met.
• Resources that each party will supply to the project.
• Boundaries and process for requesting and approving change orders.
• Billing and payment process.
• Dispute resolution process.
• ...and any additional topics that YOU or your Organization include to guard against due to industry standards or past experience.
2. Meet with the Consultant to discuss the Contract in sufficient detail to confirm that:
• All expectations are mutually understood and there has been a "meeting of the minds."
• Requested changes can be considered for adoption. [Your Consultant may have his/her own standard Contract or may have been advised to modify/add certain terms by his/her own Attorney.]
• Be exceedingly but politely clear that YOU are to be held accountable for the results and will be closely observing the Project's progress.
3. Monitor the Project's progress and meet periodically with the Consultant to:
• Confirm actual progress.
• Openly discuss challenges, limitations, and unanticipated factors that may need to be addressed.
• Provide additional information or remove Organizational roadblocks that will aid the Consultant.
4. Celebrate the successful outcome of the Project! (Who knows...you might even let the Consultant come to dinner...)

It all comes down to constant and collaborative communication and an unambiguous expectation of accountability between YOU and your Consultant. While the Consultant you hire is not an employee or a permanent member of your Team, the leadership style you employ should closely resemble how you communicate daily with your own Team and Leaders and establish accountability amongst yourselves.

DROP THE PRETENSE! (AND ACHIEVE THE OBJECTIVE)

"In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy..." ~Lao Tzu 


 "Authority is always built on service and sacrifice." ~James C. Hunter, The Servant  






"This project would move along much more quickly if everyone assigned to the project actually wanted to be on the team," remarked a client at the outset of our recent meeting. I prodded her for additional detail.


"For instance," she continued, "while most of us arrive for the project meetings on time and prepared to focus upon the agenda, we have a few members who straggle in, phones still attached to their ears, wearing undisguised disdain for being burdened with having to attend the meeting. We are all managers and supervisors in our various areas, but for some reason it appears that these few believe that their position should exempt them from having to work on the project. When drawn into the discussion by the Project Leader, these few individuals deflect commitments or delay sharing needed data from their areas of responsibility. Worse, they sometimes become downright abrasive when pressed by others who are relying upon those commitments or data."


As my colleague Robert Whipple discusses in "Wag More, Bark Less", a barking dog is simply warning possible encroachers to steer clear of his territory. But almost nothing could be less desirable in the workplace than an environment of feared territorial encroachment. In the ever-increasing competitiveness for consumers in our industry, as Leaders and Team Members we must become more effective collaborators at cross-training, supporting one another's efforts and ultimately delivering the best products and services to fulfill our members'/customers' needs.


As a contracted Project Team Facilitator, I cannot afford myself the luxury of brandishing my title and authority or shirking my responsibilities to the Project Team or to the Organization. An effective Project Team requires that ALL members of the team--regardless of organizational title or number of employees reporting to them--must come to the Project Team as equals in responsibility. The Organization forms a Project Team for a sole purpose: To Achieve the Objective.


Perhaps your Organization is merging with another Organization; launching a new technology platform; rolling out a new loan product. At the end of the Project, regardless of the detail of the metrics, success will ultimately be measured by: Did We Achieve the Objective?


How do you ensure that individual pretense, self-importance, and other personal blindspots do not reduce your Project Team's effectiveness?

1. Early in the project (best: at the kick-off meeting), communicate the shared expectation to all assigned Team Members that you are coming together as a Team of equals, chosen for the respective strengths and expertise that each individual brings to the Project Team.
2. If during the project life cycle certain individuals fail to fully engage or actively disassociate themselves from the shared responsibility to the Project Team, then politely but directly remind those individuals of the path between their participation/contribution and the successful achievement of the Project Objective.
3. Follow up as necessary with offline one-on-one dialogue to uncover any additional reasons that the recalcitrant individual may have for failing to support his own shared responsbility to the Project Team.
4. When personal responsibility and inherent professionalism fail to spur that individual to shoulder his responsibility to effectively achieve the Project Objective, you may then use additional Organizational leverage to the extent needed.

My final point is rooted in the concept well espoused by Jack Welch that some managers in the workplace may not be of the caliber that your Organization would seek to retain to reach its long-term Objectives. That being said, sometimes the high level of collaboration required for a Project Team to successfully achieve its Objective is underdeveloped in (or rejected by) a percentage of managers in your Organization. Upon having the deficiency brought to their attention, many individuals will accept the feedback, seek self-improvement, and grow as Leaders from the experience. But those individuals who choose to remain islands unchanged will find themselves islands outside of the Organization. Bon voyage!

GETTING TO "NO"

"Everyone must choose one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret." ~Jim Rohn

"If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession." ~Carlos Castaneda

 
I am obviously a proponent of workplace and societal effectiveness, especially when working in financial institution teams to accomplish myriad objectives that contribute to achieving the core aims of the organization. Often we are called upon to exhibit flexibility and efficiency to work effectively in those teams. And while many of us are familiar with Fisher & Ury's excellent negotiation read, GETTING TO YES, my friend, Monty Rainey, raises some interesting points in his article regarding the questionable effectiveness of Multitasking that led me to consider the alternative wisdom of "getting to no."


"Just Say No" became the popular cultural refrain in response to the epidemic of youth drug use a generation ago and remains equally important today. When faced with cataclysmic outcomes such as drug addiction, child abuse, or genocide, we may find it unquestionably simple to resoundingly say "no" to the heinous perpetrators and actions that lead to pain, suffering and death of countless individuals globally. Why, then, do so many of us lack that same resolve to say "no" when it comes to the everyday requests we find ourselves bombarded with via email, telephone, and in person?

As Stephen Covey aptly said, "(with people) if you want to save time, don't be efficient. With people, slow is fast and fast is slow." Yet, how often do we find ourselves attempting to efficiently multitask our family, household and faith life responsibilities? The internal conversation goes something like this: "Well, if I can review this proposal while helping Timmy with his Algebra homework after picking him up from hockey, then I can microwave some soup and help Betty with her science fair project that's due tomorrow once Lilly brings her home from ballet. That should leave me enough time to complete my presentation while I watch the 11 o'clock news." Did you smile knowingly, even just a little bit?

Our spouses, our children and our friends deserve the quality of our time, not simply the spectre of our harried presence. While there are admittedly differing viewpoints, as noted by Maureen Salamon (Healthday), this tendency to overschedule and multitask has even infiltrated the lives of our youth, causing varying degrees of unnecessary stress in children.

Applying that same perspective to our financial institutions and our teams, I invite you to review the outcomes you seek to achieve and I encourage you to examine the expectations and roles--both explicit and implicit--that each contributor is fulfilling to ensure that each member of the team has been assigned an appropriate share of the effort. As Leaders, we must factor into our review the cultural perceptions that each team member may have regarding priorities and imperatives, and ensure that an expectation of work-life balance is clearly communicated to everyone.

We must empower our team members to know that it is acceptable to choose to say "no" when a proposed additional task or project would impede an organizational objective of higher importance. While we must also be careful not to create the false impression that no one is expected to remain flexible when higher importance objectives arise, we should  emphasize that increased efficiency and decreased error rates can be achieved when one is allowed to "Just Do It"--to focus upon the highest priorities first--instead of attempting to juggle too many multitasked items. 

A confident and integrity-driven Leader knows that he can trust his team members to plan accordingly to meet or beat each milestone on the timeline. Given that trust, those same team members are better able to balance their lives outside of the organization, thus moving them personally into better alignment with their loved ones and their community. The most effective project leaders and team members I've observed are those men and women who know how to kindly say "no" and then get back to the task at hand. The strongest banks and credit unions will continue to be led by those focused Leaders.

TODAY'S QUESTION: Do members of your team continue to labor under the illusion of multitasking? What can we do as Leaders to authentically convey the effectiveness of focused attention and remove the expectation of multitasking? 

CHARACTER: A Foundation of Customer Confidence

"Character is much easier kept than recovered."  -Thomas Paine

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."  -James D. Miles

I recently visited a service provider in my local area, and received the value-added service that I have now come to expect from the organization. In fact, their service offerings are nearly identical to many local competitors, but I continue to loyally patronize the organization for one particular "plus factor": character. Quite simply, not only do their representatives not attempt to sell me products and services that don't fulfill my needs, but they will also inform and dissuade me if I am requesting a product or service for which I do not currently have a need. Now THAT is a plus factor that makes financial sense.

You have likely observed and most certainly have heard or read about other organizations' business transactions that were conducted with something less than integrity and fair dealing. One does not have to be thinking of large conglomerates or evil backroom deals to understand the deeply negative impact that such actions have upon unwary customers, innocent employees and other competitors in the industry. In fact, most of our interactions with business organizations likely occur locally, whether they be our professional or our personal dealings.

Consider the organizations that you return to for products and services. Even if the products and services themselves are fungible in the marketplace, something (quality, service, dependability, etc.) draws you back to that organization or even one particular location or representative of an organization with whom you enjoy conducting your transactions. Spend a moment jotting down 2 or 3 words that describe attributes you value in that organization. Although the words "integrity" or "character" may not appear initially among the top 2 or 3 descriptors, if we were to analyze that organization more thoroughly, we would most likely discover that foundational pillars of the culture include integrity and character.

Character cannot be taught, but it will most certainly be modeled and adopted throughout an organization. For an individual who is still developing his/her character or who struggles with integrity decisions, well-placed coaching may often provide a life-changing shift toward stronger character. Conversely, a perversion of character leading to a lack of integrity will also be modeled and adopted. When the Leaders in an organization live lives of integrity day in and day out, their character--whether at home, in the community, or in the organization--becomes firmly entrenched in making right choices.

Character-based Leaders will attract like-minded team members, provide role models for others whose character is still being formed, and repel those individuals who do not share the same value of strong character. This principle holds true whether we are speaking of a family, a youth group or a project team.

When members of a Team measure themselves against a character-based standard, their personal development, professional interactions, and service to clients/customers/members is infused with integrity. Such a culture requires less formal rules, fosters teamwork and continuous improvement, and serves to eliminate many of its own potential challenges because individuals who attempt to subvert the character-based standard are quickly identified and either choose to leave or are asked to leave. A culture built upon a character-based standard provides no haven for shortcuts, duplicity, or lazy performance.

Customers recognize when they are being dealt with fairly and transparently, because they themselves are persons of integrity. Hence they not only return to your organization and its team members, but these customers also send their friends, family and colleagues to do business with you as well. Your growing customer base and healthy bottom line attest to the success of your character-based culture being practiced by your Teams.

Unfortunately, the converse is true as well, so competitors who fail to develop a character-based culture may attempt to gain marketshare through gimmicks, duplicity, or outright disregard for true customer needs and team member welfare. In the end, such a competitor will fail in business because the Leaders failed themselves, their Teams and their customers. Not a pretty sight!

You are Leader committed to the character-based standard, so I can already envision how you treat your family, your team members, and your customers. Continue to set that standard and those who interact with you and work for you will model and adopt integrity-laden principles as well. Your investment will be well worth it, both in the short run and in the end.

TODAY'S QUESTION: Are there individuals in my organization who may be failing to support our character-based culture for whom coaching may provide the additional encouragement they need to succeed here?

Embrace YOUR Gen Z Strategy

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." -C. S. Lewis
 
"Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be." -Khalil Gibran

Many organizations--perhaps YOURS--have increasingly been finding religion in "launching a Gen Y marketing strategy" over the past couple years. Really? Given the tens of thousands of advertisements that Gen Y had been exposed to over the past three decades, their consumer preferences for traditional products & services (YES, this includes financial institutions) were largely formed a decade or more ago. You are too late to that party unless you attracted them in the prior decade. You may not care YET about Gen Z because you're large, growing, financially stable, diversified, etc....but you WILL care when Gen Z mothballs you in cyberspace over the coming decade. But why?

As Spire Research & Consulting detail, Generation Z is comprised of approximately 1.8 billion consumers, comprising 26.57% of the population. Aged between 7-16 years old, Gen Z only knows a world built upon a mobile multi-channel platform. Extreme comfort with social networking technology and its inherent culture of transparency and immediacy represent the Gen Z lingua franca. They don't hear your radio ads or see your print advertisements about great auto loan rates, and while you may not think that's important because most of them cannot purchase a vehicle YET...your competitors who already buy ad space on Facebook or Google, and post relevant videos to YouTube have already built brand recognition with them. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Gen Z is brand loyal and are becoming increasingly bigger spenders than even Gen Y was at the comparative age.

Gen Z is communicating with one another 24/7/365. Good, bad or just plain dull, YOUR organization's service, employee behavior, decor, convenience, inconvenience, lack of web chat, lack of mobile banking, etc. will be posted to blogs, social networking sites, and streamed globally by the most enterprising of their members. As Galia Myron chronicles, the most common activities the teens described while blogging "were playing video games (65 percent); watching television (45 percent); doing homework (40 percent); going to music, dance, or martial arts lessons (38 percent); browsing the Internet (29 percent); and participating in faith-based activities (22 percent)." But pay particular attention that a large population of the teens were "apt to record feeling of boredom (65 percent)" while blogging, because if YOUR organization's social media presence remains bland and uninviting, you (and your target audience) could find yourself hearing all about it on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

What is YOUR organization doing differently than YOUR competitors to differentiate yourself from the financial institution morass? Gen Z will bank with their parents' bank or credit union, but only if their members perceive a relevant relationship between the institution and themselves. You won't be able to simply count on the legacy effect.

Do you feature culturally relevant individuals and phrasing in your youth marketing efforts?

Do you adequately staff your social networking presence, or like many institutions do you give lip service to social networking, tossing an occasional lame blog post or tweet out there like a crumb to the masses?

Do you employ a member of Gen Z in an active advisory and communications role? Pick yourself up off the floor and give it some serious consideration...because YOUR competition already has that individual on their team.

Are YOU ready to embrace your Gen Z strategy...or will you simply continue to dress an old Gen Y marketing strategy in chic clothing and expect it to look like anything other than grandma in a mini-skirt...the numbers won't lie.

EMPOWER THE GRASS ROOTS OF YOUR COMMUNITY

***DISCLAIMER: As always, this brief policy article represents my own research and opinions and does not purport to represent the opinions of nor was it funded by any third party organization.***


"No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse." -Theodore Roosevelt .

"We believe this (Debit Card Interchange) rule should be thoroughly and expeditiously reviewed prior to implementation to ensure that it will not raise fees or otherwise harm at-risk communities, including communities of color." - Hilary Shelton, NAACP

Although pleas from concerned military, rural and urban families regarding the looming threat to free debit cards and free checking continue to pour in, I have been heartened by the thoughtful messages I've been receiving from fellow financial services industry  leaders describing their grass roots efforts to ignite Congressional action to delay implementation of the ill-conceived Debit Card Interchange Rule (see: http://www.nafcu.org/Tertiary.aspx?id=22587).

As we in the industry are reminded daily, Senate Bill 575 has yet to be brought up for a vote, as Senator Tester (D-MT) has yet to garner the necessary votes for passage. This is not a time to let up, but a time to let loose our resources to bear down on our elected officials to take well-reasoned pro-consumer action to enact a delay while objective study of the proposed Rule's impact can be undertaken.


Our advocates in the Beltway, led by Frank Keating (ABA) and Fred Becker (NAFCU), are to be commended for their tireless efforts, in concert with their state counterparts, to educate the public about the very real household economic effect that implementation of this dubious Rule would wreak. But simply posting any of the following web links on our Internet home pages and expecting our consumers to jump up and take action en masse is an inadequate strategy.
                                                                                                                                                                         http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/


http://www.saveyourdebitcard.com/


http://www.stopthedebitcardrule.com/

We must embrace our consumers with the same level of engagement that we do when meeting their financial product and service needs. Much as our consumers require our expertise and guidance to assist them in identifying appropriate deposit, loan and investment products, so too must we stand ready to assist them to more fully understand the real financial price that their families will pay if we allow the demise of the current free market electronic payments system.

Since we don't solely rely upon a newsletter article, an email campaign or a home page posting to conduct our day-to-day business, we must employ the same face-to-face actions to engage, educate, and empower our loyal consumers to take collective grass roots action. Based upon what some of our colleagues across the nation are doing, I ask you:

* Have you prepared your retail teams with adequate FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) material to aid them as they educate and assist your consumers to better understand the need to take action on this issue.

* Have you placed prominent educational materials (posters, buck slips, brochures) at your retail locations and ATM kiosks to raise awareness?

* Have you included your Congressional representative(s)' and Senators' district constituent relations office phone numbers and address prominently on such materials?

* Are you offering prepared letters and self-addressed envelopes directed toward those elected officials to your retail branch consumers for their signature and easy mailing?

We must make the looming cost of failing to delay/defeat the Rule very real and very personal to our public. Our consumers trust us with their investment choices, their home-buying dreams, their vehicle financing...they will trust us if we engage them at that same personal, community-based level of compassion and understanding regarding the impending loss of free checking and free debit card transactions. Our consumers deserve our continued best efforts.

Don't forget: The proposed Rule was a pro-business creation conceived by lobbyist Rob Green, Executive Director of the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR), these trade associations represent corporate retail and restaurant conglomerates that have long sought to unilaterally renegotiate the debit card interchange fees to which they had contractually agreed. 

Thank you for your continued efforts at your institutions to engage, educate, and empower your consumers to contact their elected Congressional Representatives to voice their disapproval of this proposed Rule.

D.C. LOBBYIST TARGETS HARD-WORKING FAMILIES

***DISCLAIMER: As always, this brief policy article represents my own research and opinions and does not purport to represent the opinions of nor was it funded by any third party organization.***


"My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was really young, but I spent every summer with my grandparents, and I'd stay with my grandfather on the farm in Longview. He was retired from the railroad, and he had a small farm with some cows and some pigs. I remember part of my youth was feeding hogs and plowing fields and stuff, so that's a part of me." -Forest Whitaker

"We believe this (Debit Card Interchange) rule should be thoroughly and expeditiously reviewed prior to implementation to ensure that it will not raise fees or otherwise harm at-risk communities, including communities of color." - Hilary Shelton, NAACP

I have become very disturbed over the past several weeks as I've received innumerable pleas from cash-strapped rural and urban families regarding the effect of the pending Debit Card Interchange Rules that threaten to add transaction fees for using a debit card and to take free checking away from those hard-working families struggling to make ends meet.

http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/

Why would anyone want to charge families more to purchase children's clothing and groceries. Don't those big retail corporations earn enough profits already?

And why would anyone want to increase restaurant costs for a family that can only only afford to eat out every once in a while, and even waits to splurge for such a luxury for times between special occasions?

I like fast food, but I certainly don't like any politician pulling a fast one that harms our farm families.

Just plain disrespectful to our working men and women in our cities if you ask me or any other patriot!

What does Illinois Senator Dick Durbin have against hard-working dual-income families?
You can call and ask him at (202) 224-2152.

What did debit card interchange fees have to do with a few unscrupulous and irresponsible former mortgage lenders? And what motivated Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to bring his amendment to the Senate Floor to be included in the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 when he did?

http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/What_Can_I_Do_675.html

Initially it would appear that Senator Durbin, as a member of the Senate Leadership, simply recognized that the Congressional mood for financial reform legislation could easily absorb another "consumer protection" measure. Yet I couldn't help but question who/what had motivated this particular measure, since the public had not been clamoring for it and no definitive study of the debit interchange topic had concluded that it harmed either the consumer public or the sophisticated commercial enterprises that freely contracted to provide or benefit from debit card interchange services.

When a diverse array well-respected public responsibility groups, including the NAACP, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Black Chamber of Commerce, and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, join together to urge Congress to revisit the well-funded and erroneous legislation, consumers immediately recognize that something is amiss in Washington. Our Congressional leaders certainly wouldn't approve of such financial measures that harm our hard-working spouses stretching every budget dollar!

Does your Congressional representative stand with urban and farm families on the Debit Interchange issue?
Ask him/her: http://www.savemyfreechecking.com/What_Can_I_Do_675.html

The debit card interchange rule doesn't actually have anything to do with legitimate consumer protection for families. Financial services professionals have always supported the common-sense market-driven consumer protection measures and licensing requirements that protect the public from the few unscrupulous charlatans who engage in predatory practices.

Since financial services professionals are simply honest, hard-working consumers with families just like you and me, they clearly recognize that protecting the integrity and public trust within the financial services industry has always provided a win-win outcome. The majority of potential misdeeds are squelched before any damage can be wrought due to internal control policies, ethics training, licensing requirements, and the self-policing nature of the industry.

The debit card interchange rule was a pro-business creation born upon a conference room table within Suite 1100 at 325 7th Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., home of the National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Association, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, and the Merchant Payments Coalition. These trade associations represent corporate retail and restaurant conglomerates that have long sought to unilaterally renegotiate the debit card interchange fees to which they had contractually agreed. Apparently dissatisfied with their own business leaders' efforts employing commercial negotiation in the free market, these organizations turned to trade association lobbyists to continue the effort using Federal Government action to harm military families by establishing debit card usage fees and eliminating your free checking account.

Enter Rob Green, Executive Director of the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR), who succeeded Jack Whipple last month to manage all NCCR government relations advocacy. Preceding his move within the confines of Suite 1100, Green was Vice President, Government and Political Affairs at the National Retail Federation (NRF), where he served as a senior lobbyist for the world’s largest retail trade association during the influential time leading up to Senator Durbin's introduction of the debit card interchange "consumer protection" rule.

Lobbyist Green immediately recognized that a perfect storm would briefly open the display window of opportunity for the NRF during which time he would propose a government price-fixing rule that would amount to a 72.7% reduction in interchange revenue for the financial services industry that had built the networks and provided the fraud reduction technology that facilitated cost-savings for consumers and businesses. Imagine if the NRF had found themselves on the receiving end of proposed legislation that would have mandated reducing their retail prices by 72.7% to those very same consumers? Would the NRF have simply "embraced" that legislation? We think not.

I am certainly not accusing Senator Durbin or Rob Green of any violations of federal law, but FEC records detail that more than just burgers and fries were in the bag when the honorable Senator and his colleagues met the former-NRF lobbyist and current NCCR Executive Director at the drive-thru window of opportunity. You yourself may follow the money transfers disclosed in publicly-available documents. While some of the world's largest big box retailers represented by Green poured money into organizations associated with Durbin and his former aides lobbying for the rule, the good Senator wove the rule into the larger legislative framework intended to curb the egregious mortgage-related abuses perpetrated by the few.

From a corporate executive viewpoint framed to maximize shareholder returns, one can certainly understand why the investment into lobbying appeared (and continues) to be a prudent investment. But given the certain unfavorable financial impact that the debit card interchange rule would impose upon American families struggling to emerge from the recent financial downturn, I would urge Senator Durbin to assume a new ethical stance and join his colleague Representative Barney Frank to support further objective study of the issue in the light of day and allow the results of such studies to be fully disclosed to non-lobbyists to allow for a proper analysis of the real impact upon the American family's budget.

For leading this effort on behalf of all American families--rural and urban--I applaud the consistent and untiring effort being put forth by Frank Keating (ABA) and Fred Becker (NAFCU) nationally, as well as John Llewellyn (Michigan Bankers Association) and Jordan Kingdon (Michigan Credit Union League) to educate the public about the very real household economic effect that implementation of this dubious rule would wreak. Ultimately, our collective efforts to preserve consumer choice and to protect business from government unconstitutional price-fixing will prevail in the bright light of day. Thank you.