WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) – ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs – met today with community bankers from across Ohio to discuss the importance of community banks to Ohio consumers and businesses. In attendance was Mickey Schwarzbek, president and CEO of Sherwood State Bank in Sherwood. Brown emphasized his commitment to providing targeted regulatory relief for the nation’s smallest community banks in a manner that does not undermine safety and soundness and consumer protections.

“Families and small businesses across in Sherwood and across Ohio depend on their community banks – like Sherwood State Bank – for their mortgages, savings accounts and business loans,” Brown said. “These Main Street institutions help create jobs and provide safe and reliable financing options to Ohio families. They deserve a chance to compete on a level playing field with the Wall Street megabanks. We should simplify and streamline rules for community banks where appropriate while maintaining safety, soundness, and consumer protections.”

Brown met with 17 Ohio community bankers during their trip to Washington, D.C., for the Independent Community Bankers of America's (ICBA) annual Washington Policy Summit. The meeting participants included Robert Palmer, president and CEO of the Community Bankers Association of Ohio, and ICBA Chairman Jack Hartings, president and CEO of Peoples Bank Company in Coldwater, OH.

Brown is a staunch advocate for small banks, which are cornerstones of their communities and vital to the U.S. economy. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, small banks hold 14 percent of America's banking assets and make almost half of all of the smaller loans to farms and small businesses. In Ohio, 80 percent of the community banks have less than $500 million in total assets.

Brown has urged the Banking Committee to take up the bipartisan Privacy Notice Modernization Act that Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) reintroduced that would streamline the financial privacy notifications that banks provide consumers. The legislation, which Brown originally sponsored in 2013, would require banks to alert customers when their privacy policies and information-sharing practices change, while eliminating duplicative, annual, jargon-laden notifications that are often ignored by consumers.

 

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