Tioga State Bank CEO tells Congressional subcommittee to ease up on community banks

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The president and CEO of Tioga State Bank, of Spencer, N.Y., told a Congressional subcommittee this week that it was time for federal regulations to differentiate between megabanks and community banks.

“Community banks didn’t cause the financial crisis, and we should not bear the weight of overreaching regulation intended to address it,” Robert Fisher testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit on Tuesday (Jan. 9). Fisher was addressing the subcommittee as a member of the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), a national organization representing more than 5,700 banks with more than 52,000 branches.

Fisher spoke in favor of four bills that, according to a release from the ICBA, would help protect smaller banks from regulations imposed on the largest banks.

The bills are:

The Community Financial Institution Exemption Act, which would exempt community banks with less than $50 billion in assets from all prospective rules and regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to the ICBA.

The Home Mortgage Reporting Relief Act of 2017, which the ICBA said, “would provide temporary enforcement relief from new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting requirements and restrict the CFPB’s ability to make the new data publicly available.”

The Community Bank Reporting Relief Act, which would reduce the size of required first- and third quarter reports for banks with assets of less than $5 billion.

The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which the ICBA release said was bipartisan legislation that “would provide robust community bank regulatory relief to strengthen economic growth and job creation.”

Fisher, a fifth-generation banker, has also previously spoken out against regulations that treat small banks and large banks the same. “The best practices for megabanks aren’t necessarily the best practices for community banks,” he told BJNN in late 2017.

Contact McChesney at cmcchesney@cnybj.com