Most of you who know me…know I have a passion for community banking. It’s my livelihood…I live and breathe it…I believe in it.
We have all heard the stories of how community banks have built our communities…our community banks are the “gems” in our communities that have given us the opportunities to buy our homes, build our businesses and save for our kids’ educations.
Equally as important…the money that we deposit and save in our community banks stays in our communities. It’s as simple as we put money into our community bank. Our community bank puts money into our community.
When we deposit and save our money in a bank that is headquartered outside of Michigan, most of that money leaves Michigan to support that bank’s state.
Many of us are seeing the ad campaign that Comerica Bank has in all the Michigan newspapers and trade journals across the state. The ad says that Comerica has been here in our state since 1849. But, the ad doesn’t say that they left Detroit in 2007 moving their headquarters to Dallas. I appreciate that they are supplying jobs in Michigan. We need those jobs. But, they are not keeping their insured deposits in Michigan any longer.
In fact, Michigan has over $163 billion in insured deposits. Yet, over $110 billion of those deposits, (nearly two-thirds!) leave Michigan every night to support Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and North Carolina.
At a time when we are concerned with the financial stability of our state…it is time to truly consider where our banks are headquartered so we can keep our money in our Michigan communities.