Messages from the PresidentBob Meyerson
If you are new to the area, or even if you have been here awhile, you may be inclined to think that larger banking institutions have more to offer, more sophisticated products, and maybe even more reliable service. Some of that may be true, in certain circumstances. However, I would like to give you some serious reasons to consider working with a smaller institution such as ours. First, our service charges are far more reasonable than larger banks. We don't nickel & dime our customers. We don't charge you for checking your balance, for counting your coins, for producing a courtesy checking account statement or amortization schedule. We don't offer misleading "services" such as overdraft "protection" that carries an annual fee and an activation fee in addition to the overdraft fee (we do it the old fashioned way -- by charging just the overdraft fee). On the loan side, we don't up-charge for appraisals, credit bureau reports or legal opinions. We don't pull fast ones. Not even slow ones. We have a conscience. More broadly, we are accessible. You can talk to a decision maker about your account, or regarding bank policy. You don't have to find your way through a maze of menus at an impersonal call center -- we have live people answering our phones (though you can communicate electronically during or after hours). Our doors are open convenient hours, including Saturdays until noon. If you have a problem where you don't quite fit into our guidelines, we will talk about it and try to find a way to accommodate you. If we can't be all things to all people, we try to be most things. Our practice is to put ourselves in your shoes and try to find a way to make it work. As for reliability, we have been in business for over seventy-five years. We are regulated by the same agencies that regulate other banks. We may be small, but we think that allows us the opportunity to squeeze through the cracks. And you can be certain of one thing: WE WANT YOUR BUSINESS! While setting up this web site, we were confronted by an old nemesis: DISCLOSURE. For us it is a nuisance. It means smothering out customers in paper-based (or web cluttering) legalese. It costs us time and money. It represents documentation busywork when we are audited by our bank regulators. Did you read our Copyright, Security, Privacy or Electronic Funds Transfer notice? Our guess is that only 1 in a hundred, 3 at most, actually bother to do so. On the other hand, every one of these disclosures has a history in law and politics. Just as an example, the Privacy disclosure originates in a problem that actually occured right here in Minnesota. One of the larger banks in the state gave name and address information to a third party vendor. Unfortunately, the computer file listing happened to contain other information as well, namely account numbers and balances. The bank claimed this was done in error. Whether that was true or not, Congress passed a law to prevent it from happening again. As a result, financial institutions now have to disclose their information sharing practices. That is a good thing, sort of. The problem is that consumers are inundated with so many of these disclosures that they have stopped reading them. That is, until there is a problem. Then the financial institution is held up to the standard it has publicly announced. Still, given the paperwork blizzard created by all these disclosures do consumers really know the law? Should we present disclosures to everyone, or just to those who request them? If we don't present them unrequested, how do consumers learn they are available? Is there a method for accessing the disclosures simply, or does it require electronic or other kinds of sophistication? Do disclosures represent innoculation against unfair practices, or only against real curiosity about bank practices? Are they actually worth the trouble? Whatever the answers to these questions, the Atwater State Bank will comply with regulatory requirements. In fact, we will do more than comply; we will make sure that we adhere to the highest ethical standards! And when we make a mistake (which is inevitable) we will make sure we correct it as quickly as possible. That is our pledge to you! In the early days of internet scams (i.e., a few months ago) scammers were buying things listed on the internet especially on e-Bay, and then over remitting the price to the seller. They were using counterfeit bank cashier's checks, what used to be the gold standard in the checking world. Once the seller received the overpayment the scammer would ask that the difference be wired back. The reason given might be that the scammer was overseas and couldn't do it himself (scamming is almost exclusively a male occupation, but females no doubt will be breaking into it soon), or there might be some other lame excuse. The real reason that the scammer requested a wiring of funds is that a check can always be stopped, whereas wired funds can almost never be retrieved, especially if it is wired abroad. It would take a few days for the counterfeit check originally mailed to the victim to be returned. By that time the funds would have been wired out and the scammer nowheve to be found. Every day seems to reveal a new variation on the scam. For a while it was the sweepstakes scam. You were told you won the Australian sweepstakes, the Canadian sweepstakes, even the New Jersey version (but, for some reson, never the Irish Sweepstakes). Then you were asked to wire out funds to cover the taxes, or the paperwork, or the whatever. Of course, you weren't a winner. Actually, you were a loser. The next step in fraud evolution was to notify you that you had won and that the funds would be wired to your account. Once you saw that the funds were in your account you should wire the fee out. How could you lose? This is how: the funds weren't actually wired to your account. Rather, they were sent by counterfeit check through the mail to your account. When you checked your balance you saw the money was there but didn't notice that it came from a check, not a wire. Boing! Most recently the fraud has taken a new turn. Now they are counterfeiting U.S. Treasury checks! Still, the fraud involves a wire out of your account. Sometimes they get you to reveal your account number and then send a paper draft against your account. By the time you review your bank statement, it is too late - even though we know the bank where the funds were deposited, the scammers have picked up stakes and moved on. You can probably get your money back (if you reviewed your bank statement in a timely manner) but you have just helped financed criminal activity. What's a person to do? Never give anyone your bank account number! Never wire funds to someone you don't know. Always look a gift horse in the mouth. Ask us if you have the slightest suspicion. Remember the old adage: If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't. |