Page 13 - December 31 2017 Reporter

2018 League Chairman Travis Schroll

$550 to cover the imposed upgrade to our system” says Travis. Another added burden for the
client is the increased volume of loan papers to review. Even with full transparency and receipt
of loan documents in advance, the process just takes more time.

“It’s about being fair, and the community banking industry really doesn’t feel like we were the
underlying cause of the recession, insists Schroll. You’d be hard pressed to find a community
banker that contributed to the bubble, so to be singled out as a group forced to bear the burden
of the regulation is one-sided.” Furthermore, he suggests that the big banks aren’t all that excited
about the repeal of Dodd Frank because they’ve had the means to build up the staffing and
systems to protect themselves and benefit from the efficiencies due to their size and ability to
comply. It’s almost become an advantage to them as they become bigger. “It wasn’t intended to
harm us, but it did” he concludes.

Q: Going forward, how should community banks market themselves?

Schroll believes one winning strategy is for community bankers to aggregate in a way that
differentiates themselves from the large financial institutions. “I’m not advocating that these larger
institutions aren’t needed. They have a clear place in our commerce. They’re part of the overall
global financial system so we need banks like them, but the community, our regulators and our
governing bodies need to understand the difference between the business model of the
community bank and the commercial institutions, he insists. My bank takes deposits and lends
out money to consumers. Pretty simple. It’s not exotic. We don’t do proprietary trading. We’re not
an investment bank. We’re not doing underwriting M & A activity, so we should not be judged on
the things we don’t do. We help small startups – restaurants and such. When it comes to savings,
traditionally our deposit base has leaned heavily toward CDs, but that product is not attractive to
the younger generation so we’re changing our product offerings to better suit that clientele. The
biggest dollar value of our portfolio is mortgage loans, but volume wise consumer loans such as
auto and unsecured loans make up the largest segment of our business in terms of sheer number
of loans. And compared to credit cards, we offer a great option.”

Q: What is your opinion of payday loans?
“Interesting topic and since I’m a bit of a
public radio nerd, I hear a lot about them,” he
admits. There’s a market they serve because
banks may not offer the terms they provide
due to regulation. For example, banks don’t
typically lend under $1,000. It just doesn’t
This is how Travis roles. make financial sense for us. Sure, they
provide short term financing, but I don’t agree
with their business model of constantly
keeping someone in debt. Always trying to renew that debt. For that they should be scrutinized,”
he says.

As a community at large, Travis believes there should be more effort to push for education on
financial literacy. It’s not being taught in schools and to remedy this, Beardstown recently
introduced an effort using the FDIC’s program. Because the program speaks to all ages, they

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December 2017 IllInoIs RepoRteR