Chicago union-focused bank leveraging high touch service with eye on growth

ABOC, which was born as Amalgamated Bank of Chicago 103 years ago, is reaching beyond its geographic base in Illinois, hoping to serve more commercial clients. The $1.2 billion bank primarily serves unions, but an official at the bank said it expects to gain new clients — initially in adjacent states — by emphasizing its personal service. .Kimberly Kam, senior vice president-sales director for union and commercial services, left Wells Fargo in the Dallas-Fort Worth area a year ago to help ABOC build a “world class” commercial lending operation. Her move to the bank corresponded with its rebrand which included the adoption of the acronym as its namesake.“We are a commercial bank, primarily working with labor unions, but we are looking to grow our footprint and go beyond Illinois,” Kam said.Kam believes the bank’s high-touch service approach will resonate with unions, municipalities and nonprofits that have seen their relationships with mega-banks cut short. She explained that clients offering a deposit relationship without a corresponding need to borrow often don’t meet the profit metrics many of the largest banks use to determine which business customers they want to serve. “They will send the client a letter, giving them 30 or 60 days to find a new bank,” Kam explained. “They will simply cut the client off, saying they no longer find the relationship to be mutually beneficial. It’s very impersonal.”While the largest municipalities, such as Chicago, can bond to raise money, smaller communities generally don’t need to borrow large sums of money. “These are communities where city employees might prefer to pick up the phone and talk to a bank representative. Well, big banks don’t offer that any more — not unless you call a one-800 number and wait on hold for 30 minutes,” Kam said. “There’s a mismatch for those smaller organizations.” Kam said she’s already helped at least a couple of new customers in that exact scenario. Kam explained that while ABOC serves individuals, it focuses on serving organizations. Those relationships often start locally, she said. The bank sometimes picks up new relationships as former local employees advance in their careers to the national or even international level of their union.ABOC can also help unions and other organizations with commercial real estate investments and other assets through its corporate trust division. Kam said unions represent a narrow niche of the commercial business arena, but she said other community banks might encounter nonprofit organizations that have been cut off by a megabank. She urged community bankers to step in wherever possible.