Wayne Cottle’s Dean Bank is “community bank” personified: a more than 100-year old institution right on Main Street in the pleasant downtown of Franklin. As such, it seems appropriate that Cottle is involved in the Independent Community Bankers Association, of which he was recently elected secretary after an active career in the organization. These are particularly interesting times for community bankers, and he says the group is fighting hard for goals that have been buzzing around the industry for months.

Wayne Cottle

Title: CEO Dean Bank, secretary of the Independent Community Bankers Association

Experience: 34 Years

Age: 62

In doing some research for this interview, I heard that the ICBA used to not admit mutual banks to the organization, but that you were the first guy to push for mutuals to be included. Is there any truth to that?

That’s not really correct … years ago, in order to be a member of the national association, you had to be a member of the state-affiliated association, which in Massachusetts was the Mass. Independent Bankers Group… but it wasn’t until I started looking for membership back in 1996 or ’97, and I found I couldn’t join because of this quirk in their national bylaws. I think at that time they only had 13 or 14 or 15 members in Massachusetts … and they addressed their bylaws, changed them, and I guess I became their next member, their first mutual bank member up here in the Northeast.

After that, membership obviously started growing in Massachusetts. I don’t know what the exact number is, but there are many dozens of members up here in the Northeast that didn’t exist before that change.

And now, the ICBA is different from organizations like the American Bankers Association in that it doesn’t include giant banks.

Yes. There are very serious differences and issues and positions between the two sides of the industry. That’s where ICBA is different … ICBA has nearly 5,000 members nationwide and they’re all community banks, so they only have one agenda, and that’s to represent community banks and to speak with a voice for community banks.

So what is on that agenda right now?

We want to make sure that Congress and the regulators know that with everything that’s going on, we’re the banks on main street that can help us out of this mess, and don’t strap us with a lot of new fees and new regulations and things that are really going to hamper our ability to lend and turn this thing around.

Right now, that special assessment from the FDIC – that 20 basis points special assessment – is going to seriously hamper community banks’ ability to lend. Right now, there’s just an incredible amount of demand, a lot of folks are refinancing their mortgages right now, we’re lending at levels higher than we’ve ever lent before – a lot of community banks are – before we’re forced to pay the special assessment. Obviously that’s going to hamper our ability to lend to the extend that we can. We didn’t create this mess, but unfortunately we’re paying for it.

ICBA is always actively looking for new members. As maybe a silver lining to all this, do you think the current regulatory upheaval will prompt more community banks to join up?

I would hope so. I would hope that community banks would recognize that there is a trade association out there that speaks their language and their language exclusively. Membership in ICBA has been strong, it’s been growing in the past couple of years in an industry that’s shrinking, so I think the community bank industry is getting the message.

I think everybody needs to be a member of a national trade association who can, because whether it’s a big bank or a small bank, you need to have a voice in Washington, people speaking for yourself. Most banks don’t have the resources and the depth to go in and represent themselves, that’s the trade association’s job. Those banks that are not members of the trade association are riding on coattails. In the case of ICBA, ICBA has 5,000 members, but it speaks for 8,000 community banks in this country.

Cottle’s Top Five “Action Items” For ICBA:

1.) Pushing for legislation to keep commercial conglomerates out of banking

2.) Supporting the dual banking system, charter choice and regulatory choice

3.) Promoting “systemic risk premiums” on large, systemically risky banks

4.) Working on alternatives to the proposed FDIC 20 basis point special assessment

5.) Making sure community banks have fair and equal access to programs such as TARP and TALF