I said good-bye to my bank today. It was not a hard-bitten business thing. My eyes stung and puddled up toward the final moments, and I had to turn and run.

What? I hear you say.

Well, this was a nice little State Bank in 1975 when I first signed up at the Hyattsville office and when I used to write letters to the Baltimore headquarters. We kept our relationship when I moved to Ocean City in 1988. The State Bankers helped me, a bewildered new widow, to get settled and to establish a new home in a new town.

At one point my checkbook became so muddled that I had to take it to the bank in a sodden lump. One of the bank officers gently took it from me and unraveled the mess. Between her patient work and my Quicken computer program, I've kept it straight ever since. We agreed that, since I only got into real trouble every 64 years, they would let me get away with it.

With that human contact, I never thought about the complexities of the banking business.

Then came a letter announcing that my dear State Bank was being devoured by a monster, TyrannoBank. My buddies assured me that everything was going to be okay, no matter how scary it looked.

Now I have a letter saying that my neighborhood bank, the one with the new name, is leaving the neighborhood. The neighborhood will have a machine, the letter said, but the actual bank with the people in it will be 'way downtown.... a place no North Ocean City resident wants to go in the crowded summer time.

I decided to move my funds to the bank where my safe deposit box already reposes. This is the bank, in fact, which granted a dear friend of mine the first small business loan in Ocean City awarded to a woman. So we had warm vibes to start with, even though it is a branch of another complex -- not as big as TyrannoBank.

Worried about my old friends, I asked what was to become of them? The story is that the large downtown institution will employ all the branch personnel. Sounds good? Well, how would you like a 26-hour work week? No, I don't mean with 40-hour pay. In fact, there are positions open for someone who wants to work 16 hours a week with no benefits. Work 20-hour weeks, and you get benefits. That's how the devourer plans to keep everyone on. Better than being on the street, you say? I guess.

These part-time positions are seen as suited for retirees or for young folks living at home and trying to go to school. Forget supporting a family or a condo. My young friends voice no complaints, but they deserve much better.

Why is all this happening? Abigail Rudoff, formerly a vice president with a major international bank -- now an attorney with a Chicago law firm -- has an informed view. First of all, the United States has long been "over-banked" compared to the rest of the industrialized world, Rudoff said. This makes competition hairy in any business. Under long-standing regulations which prohibit interstate branching and acquisitions, any small state bank today could be in trouble if area industries should move away.

Small local businesses would be hit by the move of the big operator. Borrowers might not be able to pay loans on time. Even though Federal insurance would still be in place to guarantee depositors their money, the domino effect on a small bank of a local employer-business' departure could still bring insolvency and destruction.

In response to this peril, the state regulations against interstate activity have been bent or even dismantled to allow bank-absorption by larger and more diversified institutions outside their boundaries. It happens a lot, according to Rudoff.

International banks supposedly had a huge advantage when American banks were kept within their state borders.

During the past 20 years, however, all banks have found that profitable businesses on which they've relied have been stagnating or shrinking. The banks have had to find replacements for the large, credit-worthy companies in need of money for seasonal inventory purchases. These are turning more to public commercial markets for financing.

International banks address their difficulties with some of the same remedies the Americans use; they fire people and shrink availability and services.

So, banking is not very stable for such a powerful industry. Change is the rule. Loyola became Crestar; Maryland National became NationsBank. Union Trust which became Signet actually started in 1913 as People's Loan, Savings and Deposit. People don't seem to last long in this business. Or do they?

Devouring and being devoured at the cost of the little people are not the only ways for the modern bank. There is the phenomenon of the independent, community-based bank. These warm, cuddly banks met recently in Washington under the auspices of the 83-year-old Independent Bankers Association of America representing 5500 of the US's 8,500 independent banks. These outnumber the 1,200 "big" banks, but probably not their branches or their resources. Robert Forbus, IBAA's director of communication, said in an interview that independent bankers rejoice in the provision of personal services that the big banks can't -- or won't -- give. People are, then, still vital to banking.

.The Bank of the Eastern Shore, in Cambridge, MD is an independent bank and "we plan to stay that way," President Harold Robbins told me.

How does a bank take its stance for independence? It is simple, but not necessarily easy, according to Robbins.

"We have open invitations right now from any number of state-wide banks that say, 'Are you interested in being acquired?'" In spite of this charming invitation, said Robbins, "That is not what we want to do."

Banks which end up in the jaws of a take-over, said Robbins, are often banks which have over-reached or developed unstable dependencies. It's the old "hyenas go after the wounded" principle. Eastern Shore, founded by Robbins and 14 business associates in 1986, has made and stuck by policies calculated to keep the bank healthy and safe from hyenas.

Robbins named a major employer in Dorchester County, saying "We are not looking to be their bank. We want to be their employees' bank. We want loans all over the county with all different kinds of people all working in different places."

He pictures his as a community-oriented service bank, said Robbins. "Our customers are happy; our stockholders are happy; our employees are happy. That makes a nice combination. We are not looking to be the biggest bank in the State of Maryland. We just want to be the best bank in Dorchester County."

We can't all snuggle up to independents like the Bank of the Eastern Shore. But we can recognize and appreciate the most important element; the people. Sadly, it does seem to be the little people of big banking -- the employees and the small depositors -- who feel the inconvenience and the temblors of confidence when TyrannoBank pounces.

So, if your bank is not an independent, but is one of the devoured, remember those are still good folks who take care of you.

Perhaps management can be convinced that some of the Harold Robbins principles also apply to TyrannoBank.

"If people stop coming in that door, and the telephones stop ringing," said Robbins, "we're out of business."

May 19, 1996 Jo Campbell Ecotopics International News Service

jocee@shore.intercom.net

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