Bankers say ABA hallmarks include advocacy, education and collaborative problem-solving

As the American Bankers Association celebrates its 150th anniversary, bankers aided by the organization during its 15 decades point to its importance in their lives, careers and the success of the institutions they care about..In Hazen, N.D., Christie Huber Obenauer, president/CEO of Union State Bank, appreciates the ABA’s advocacy for the banking industry on Capitol Hill and its distillation of complex issues. .Roy Terwilliger, director of member relations with the Minnesota Bankers Association, values the ABA’s educational opportunities that small banks could not afford on their own. Meanwhile Jeff Plagge, former president/CEO at Northwest Financial Corporation in Arnolds Park, Iowa, credits the organization with making him a better banker by increasing his awareness about other specialties in the industry.These bankers and others from around the Upper Midwest said they appreciate ABA’s efforts to lobby, educate and connect bankers and banks of all sizes. “The American Bankers Association does such a great job and has now for 150 years of being an advocate for the banking industry, paying attention to all that’s happening on (Capitol) Hill and helping us digest complicated things like the making of regulation and who’s speaking in those spaces … providing training and education to us collectively over time,” said Obenauer, who serves on the ABA Board of Directors. “As things grow more complicated, that becomes even more important.” Obenauer has been attending ABA events since long before she was old enough to serve in an official capacity. She began traveling to conferences in Washington, D.C., during her childhood because her dad was on the ABA Board of Directors.“I went to Washington more than a handful of times with him, mostly for fun when I was growing up, but I certainly got to be part of conventions and meetings and got to meet his colleagues,” Obenauer recalled. “That was, perhaps, more shaping for me than I knew.” A voice for bankersAs the country’s largest and oldest banking trade organization, ABA’s impact spans solutions to long-ago problems to those in the present day, such as offering $1,000 rewards for information that led to the arrest of bank robbers in the 1890s and a database meant to thwart modern-day check fraud.Bankers say the organization amplifies their voices in rooms where change and regulation happen. “To have access to people on the Hill who have a strong voice in all the spaces and are ensuring we all have a seat at the table certainly is impactful for me, but it also allows a bank my size to just be bigger than ourselves, just have a little more punch than we would otherwise,” Obenauer said.Bryan Bruns, president/CEO at Lake Central Bank in Annandale, Minn., became involved with the ABA in 2015, serving as part of its board of directors, as well as on the Community Bankers Council and Core Platforms Committee.Bruns recalls ABA’s impact on core technology as a vitally important initiative. As a banker at a small bank in Minnesota, he might not be able to talk with the CEO at one of the core providers, Bruns said, but the ABA used its strength in 2022 when bankers from the Core Platforms Committee were able to sit in a room with 14 core provider executives. “We had a very good interchange and discussed all the different issues about some of the punitive core contract provisions,” Bruns said. “The association stepped out of the way and let the bankers articulate exactly what the problems were.” They fixed issues like making core service contracts co-terminus and devised core principles, Bruns said.“They do a really good job of being able to coalesce a bunch of bankers together to have a good discussion,” Bruns said. “Not every banker that I’ve ever met, small or big, agrees on everything, but it’s the discussion that really matters.”The organization’s biggest impact is through its advocacy and ability to illustrate its viewpoint through members’ stories, said Tom Pamperin, president/CEO of Premier Community Bank in Marion, Wis..“ABA’s collection of information from the stories bankers tell, the translation into policy statements and asks that legislators need to hear and the ‘getting it across the goal line’ the ABA staff excels at would be impossible to do individually,” Pamperin said. “This impact is immeasurable.” Like Obenauer, Pamperin’s introduction to the ABA was through his dad, who was active in the association, including serving as the chair of the Community Bankers Council in the 1990s. “Our family vacations growing up were usually planned around him attending agriculture, community banker or national conventions,” Pamperin shared. In his own career, Pamperin served on the Community Bankers Council and participated in the annual Washington Summit.He appreciates ABA’s “whole industry” approach. “The industry is much like a power grid — we are all interdependent on each other, so our strength comes from the group, and a problem anywhere in the industry has an impact on the rest of us,” Pamperin said. “I need banks of all sizes to be the best they can be in the communities they serve because it will make my community — connected or not — stronger.”Advocacy in critical timesBorn of a crisis in the banking industry, the ABA is no stranger to navigating the crises of those it serves. In the years before the organization began, the U.S. was experiencing a financial panic that led to a recession. As 300 banks failed, bankers found inspiration in the women’s suffrage movement, according to a historical timeline the ABA created to celebrate its anniversary. The ABA formed in July 1875 when 349 bankers from 31 states and Washington, D.C., came together in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Since then, the ABA has continued to help bankers maneuver through challenges, not the least of which have happened in recent decades, from the financial crisis in 2008 to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when accessing information about Paycheck Protection Program loans became critical.The global financial crisis is sharp in Plagge’s memory, as he recalls that he testified seven times for ABA in the aftermath of what was happening.“It just really drove home for me, if you don’t have a voice in (Washington) D.C., whether that’s a voice through the ABA or other banking associations, others that may not be your friends will have your voice,” Plagge said. Even more recently, ABA’s advocacy contributed to the passage of Access to Credit for our Rural Economy, also known as ACRE, as part of the larger One Big Beautiful Bill. The goal of the legislation was to lower the cost of making a loan backed by agricultural real estate, making it easier for farmers, ranchers and rural homeowners to access low-cost credit, according to the ABA’s website.“That’s had a huge impact, that I've been directly involved with,” said Heather Malcolm, vice president of ag lending at Bank of the Rockies in Livingston, Mont. “And so that's huge for our small, rural communities and ag banks across the countryside.”An industry connectorBankers say they also appreciate ABA’s role as a connector and community builder within the financial services ecosystem.Malcolm has served on committees for the ABA since 2015, including the Agricultural and Rural Bankers Committee and Commercial Lending School Advisory Board. She appreciates the opportunity to meet other ag bankers.“I'm from rural Montana. I knew there were banks. I didn't understand the network of connections that you can make being involved in the American Bankers Association until I became involved,” Malcolm said, noting connections to bankers from Kentucky to California.“One thing that I learned … we may finance different commodities, but we still face the same challenges in ag lending, no matter if you're in Montana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, you have somebody else out there who understands what you're going through and that you can visit with that is not your direct competition,” Malcolm said. Last spring, the ABA celebrated its 150 years with a gathering at the Library of Congress. Plagge attended because he values all the connections he’s made.“You meet so many people over the years,” Plagge said. Plagge first became actively involved with the ABA around 1990 when he served on the Agricultural and Rural Bankers Committee, later serving two stints on the ABA Board of Directors and numerous times on committees over the decades, never saying no to an opportunity. Serving made him more aware of the perspectives of others.To illustrate that, he recalls how he was focused on farmers who had corn, soybeans, cattle and hogs. He thought that’s what they would talk about at his first committee meeting. Instead, major topics of conversation were water rights and grazing rights. “I kind of smiled to myself at the time and I thought, ‘this is how you broaden your view of the world,’” Plagge said. A valued provider of banking educationTerwilliger, a former banker who worked for the ABA as far back as 1968, sees the educational opportunities provided through the organization as a major contribution to the banking community.Early on, the ABA provided bankers with educational materials so that they could teach banking in public schools and then established an endowment to fund economic research in colleges. By 1935, it had created the ABA Graduate School of Banking, and it continues to educate the next generation of banking leaders. Banks simply don’t have enough staff to provide the volume of education essential in a financial environment, Terwilliger said. “ABA, while it’s probably thought of more as a legislative regulatory body, it’s really a very large educational institution for coordinating and facilitating continuing education among bankers,” Terwilliger said. “It’s been a very worthwhile organization for banks to belong to.”