Norman Seppala recently took office as chairman of the Massachusetts Bankers Association (MBA), stepping into his one-year term just as the national economic outlook took a nasty turn and the Dodd-Frank Act passed its one-year mark. Interesting times to be a banker – but then, as Seppala points out, the industry is constantly dealing with unexpected changes.

As chairman, Seppala will preside over the MBA’s board and take the lead on advocating for the industry to public officials. As far as bankers are concerned, he said, the fight to protect their industry is still very much ongoing.

Norman Seppala

Title: CEO, Granite Savings Bank; Rockport

Age: 60

Experience: 35 years

Industry organizations have spent the past few years lobbying against overregulation. Now that Dodd-Frank is in full swing, is that work mostly done for the Mass. Bankers Association?

[Dodd-Frank] is still a great work in progress. There are still a lot of regulations that have to be worked through and authored. And we have to forcibly advocate for our position to ensure that the regulations that may be crafted don’t impede our ability to do our jobs.

On a practical level, what does that entail?

You have to keep your legislators informed if there are adverse consequences to particular legislation – you have to point out what those are. And you have to suggest, if there are alternatives, what those are. And you have to continually advocate on behalf of some commonsense measures because the regulations don’t really differentiate anymore [between large and small banks]. [Granite Savings] is a $75 million bank: Not complex, basic products…we’re about as plain vanilla as you can get. But we still have to do the stuff banks 10 times our size have to do.

Is there any facet of it that really sticks out as unreasonable?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know all the nuances, but at the moment, the regulations with respect to "qualified residential mortgage" are completely over-thought, it’s like 500 pages. I mean, come on… How is a family, or young couple, with a median house price that’s $250,000, probably higher, with no PMI … how are they going to afford a 20 percent down payment, with the jobs picture as it is? Skin in the game, a documented ability to repay, I mean, we’ve done this for a hundred years. There’s way too much time spent on the process as opposed to the outcome. You’re trying to get a regulatory response to an event that happened, OK, but it happened outside of the regulated financial environment. So now we’re the ones who are going to have to pick up all this and we, meaning the banks, try to mitigate it as best we can.

Is most of Mass Bankers’ role this year going to be in education, or in lobbying?

It’s a fair portion of both activities. The association runs a number of educational seminars for members that cover a wide range of activities. Certainly at different times during a period there are perhaps more lobbying and advocating-type duties from the staff; some years the legislative calendars and regulatory concerns are somewhat diminished; [and] other years they’re front and center. There’s always an issue that comes out of the blue that you never plan for. As a whole it’s our job to attempt to speak strongly for a sensible regulation, balanced regulation, to perhaps provide evidence of where overreaching regulation might impair economic activity.

Any particular priorities you have for the upcoming year?

The things that I would like to see happen over the course of the year are that we can successfully tackle the regulatory side, the legislative side, and continue to create a positive environment for the industry. In Massachusetts, our members do a heck of a job, and they probably don’t get the credit they deserve.

Norman Seppala’s Top Five Resume Highlights:
1.) He has worked 36 years at Granite Savings Bank, becoming president in 1990.

2.) Seppala placed a big career emphasis on mortgage lending at previous banks – Lowell Five Cents Savings Bank, BankGloucester and now-defunct, Peabody-based Warren Five Cents Savings.

3.) He worked for a young Freddie Mac in its Boston office in the 1970s.

4.) He is on the boards of the Savings Banks Employees Retirement Association (SBERA), the Depositors Insurance Fund, and previously served on the MBA board.

5.) Seppala was nominated and appointed chairman of the MBA, which represents 190 commercial, savings and cooperative institutions