I've been in Banking since the mid 1990's. I worked at a huge Too Big To Fail bank both on the Retail and Commercial side. I left the retail side as three mergers pretty much made every customer (and employee) cranky. Plus goals continued to get harder and harder to achieve. There are only so many products you can offer to the same group of people before it becomes harassment.
When I moved to the Commercial side, it was in Energy Lending. I learned a hell of a lot about the Oil & Gas Industry working there. I was there when Enron Fell. I was actually in a restaurant in the same building where Arthur Anderson was located when they folded. It was surreal seeing dozens of people at the bar getting drunk and ordering shots before noon.
I finally left because the pressure was enormous and I hated my job. HATED my job. After spending some time away from banking and realizing just how bad the stress had been I went back into the field. I became a community banker.
Let me tell you about night and day. I love my job now. I don't travel like I used to and I'm good with that. I wear as many, if not more, hats where I work now, but I'm not stressed. Even on the worst days it isn't close to the stress I experienced while at TBTF.
The office I worked at had billions in commitments and billions in outstanding loans. We had to handle egos the size of Texas on a daily basis, who hate being told NO.
"Sorry, but a Letter of Credit to Peru cannot be issued on a Friday afternoon with no credit facility to back up that Letter. Sorry, the people who could help are all on the golf course now. Yes, I know who you are and the answer is still NO."
That is a small - very small sample of the normal crap.
So, I'm at a community bank and love it. As new regulations have been issued, I have been front and center in implementation. I deal with Risk a lot. It is very interesting watching the new regs and how everyone handles them coming out. The overdraft rules didn't really harm us like it did bigger banks. The Opt-In Reg E changes were hard to get people to understand, but wasn't a huge issue.
My big problem is making people understand that we have to make these changes because much larger banks abused consumers. Yes, we have incurred costs, but the bottom line hasn't been adversely affected. Lots of changes still coming down and we will have our challenges meeting some of them, but I can see why. I was at a huge bank and remember some of the fucked up things they told customers.
I don't miss the stress or the STRESS of working at TBTF. I love the challenges I have to juggle. I have several other areas I cover, but those regulations are settled. The best thing I can say though is simple; I know my customers. I chat with them, know their kids, know their issues, and I know what we mean to them. It is very hard to describe the mental and emotional difference between these institutions. I don't miss corporate banking for anything. I never knew I would love community banking like I do.
The above was written on July 26, 2012 and sat in my drafts section.
I stand by what I wrote then, but a new reality is setting in. My community bank is being sold. It is sad watching people who have become family suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them. A majority of the issue is Dodd-Frank. Regulatory issues make it hard to meet compliance issues when you're a small bank. That means you can't offer the full array of services that consumers look for. Rules written for the larger banks are filtering down to the small ones. Exchange fee income is down, overdraft income is down, interest income is down, and this long period of low interest rates have impacted savings in older Americans.
Three community banks in the area have been bought in the last two years. Four years ago there were six in this area. When we leave there will be one and chances are it will vanish in 2016. It's easy to see the need for bank regulation. I saw how TBTF banks worked. But the law of unintended consequences has arrived. Community banks are a dying breed. This one existed for fifty years, but will be absorbed by a big regional soon. Sorry to see it go.