Today we paid a visit to the Illinois Bankers Association in Springfield. Different from China's Banks Association, United States has special arrangement. IBA has been established for more than 100 years amy at two helping are the commercial banks and saving banks with the Illinois State. It is a nongovernmental organization, providing their diverse members with various services, including education, collaboration ,human resources, etc. Their members could be national bank brunches like J.P. Morgan Chase, and also could be small community banks, like bank of Gibson City. Both banks and individuals can join IBA on the condition that they have to pay membership fees.
Julie Clock, who is the vice president of Bank and Partner Relationship Department, gave us a presentation about the structure of IBA how it operate. They have a mission statement just like any other commercial organization. They have a board, a chairman, 8 departments and 28 staff. Actually there are several other acting similar role like IBA, among them are American bankers Association, Community bank Association, and credit union. Banks and bankers are their customers and they are facing fierce competition with their competitors to gain more influence to the 454 banks in Illinois. So they do have a motivation to provide excellent service to their members. By the way Julie mentioned that they did a lot of volunteer job in their spare time, like blood donation, cleaning the community and so on. It reminded me that in our country actually we also did a lot of volunteer job as well, but we seldom speak that's kind of things out as an advertisement.
Brian Hoffman is the president of business service department.
Ben Jackson is the vice president of government relationship department. I learned a lot from his presentation. First of all, he gave us a introduction about the regulation layers in United States. First layer is the state chartered and federal chartered banks are regulated by Division of banking, Federal reserve, NCUA,OAA and FDIC(ie, Federal deposit Insurance Corporation, to ensure all the deposits in case banks go bankruptcy. It has the right to examine the operation of all banks). The second layer is organizations like IBA, who work along with the FDIC, to help banks gain as much useful information as they can to make best decision. The last layer is the consumer financial protection bureau, which Was established just a few years ago, after the financial crisis in 2008.
We are quite interested in how they affect the government through lobby. Because in America lobby is legal. Organizations can persuade state or federal council to positive and kill negative bill for them. The little beat eating work right always they can negotiate it with the politicians, they can work in groups and sit down with their opponent, and try to make it a better bill. Once the bill is pass by the council, it will become an effective law then all you need to do is executive it.
I believe it today that lecturers faced a difficult situation because we asked asked a lot of questions, including what kind of role the IBA play if one of their member fails, how do they deal with different banks of different size, because they may have quite different interests. We also discussed what kind of information IBA can provide to their members, and how the committees and board make a decision, what if a member break the law or do bad things, and how they evaluate their performance.
We also learnt that international banks operated in Illinois state can also join IBA, and recently Bank of Tokyo is working on it. Their membership fees are depending on the scale of their assets.
One thing to add, that they have rich resources with government and state council, because they collect funds and make great mount of political donations every year. However, they would like to only use it in high level issues. They will also build their influence through various of activities like annual conference in the field. Once their is Industrial news or scams, they will communicate with their members in time and make sure they are aware of the new trends.
Lately they also work with UIUC to do some research the banking industries, rural banking, taxation and debt. The new financial products such as the mobile payment and blockchain are within their sight, and they are try to figure out what kind of roles the innovative methods will play in the new future. They are a little worry about the fin-tech products, which are direct to customers, may lack of regulations, for they provide similar products while under no regulation, which will harm the fair competition of the industry. If they really fail, the big potential harm to customers. At the same time, they are open to examine how to work with fin-tech.
The real boss, Linda Koch, CEO of IBA, showed up, welcomed us and explained a few confusing questions, such as how they discourse their documents, the frequency to file regulation papers.
A picture with the main lecturer, Julie.
Great experience in IBA. Now I am thinking about comparing Chinese related association with IBA, however, I can not come up with a similar one! There is still room for us to grow. Maybe in the future, we will also have a similar organization, providing excellent service to our banks in China! I am looking forward to it!