Community Bankers of Iowa Monthly Banker Update January 2014 | Page 6

Fine Points
Written By: Camden Fine, President and CEO of ICBA

What We Fight For
Take heart. Be proud, even. You’re an
important part of an extraordinarily successful
American experiment spreading economic
opportunity and freedom—that is, our uniquely
diversified financial system of community
banks.
Because of our relationship-based business
model, no other banking system on earth is as
accessible and responsive to consumers and
businesses—or as dynamic and resilient—
as our nation’s community banks. From
across Europe and Asia and the Americas,
many countries are studying how they might
adapt the advantages and principles of our
community banking model. Our country’s
economy wouldn’t be nearly as successful
without the inherent accountability that
independent, locally and autonomously
operated community banks provide.
History is on our side. Many economists and
economic historians attribute our community
banking system to the United States’ rise to
a worldwide economic leader. Our country’s
earliest successful entrepreneurs, inventors,
manufacturers, farmers and homesteaders,
as well as corporations large and small, were
backed by community banks—well before
the recent aberration of megabanks. The first
skyscraper builders never needed a giant,
systemically important, obtusely complex and
interconnected megabank to finance their
amazing structures.
Still today, without community banks, millions
of Americans and businesses woul