National City targets Hispanic customers in Dayton, OH

Bank plans program for financial education

July 29, 2005
By Suzelle Tempero

As competition steps up among banks to reach the minority community, National City Corp. is unveiling a new program in Dayton to help its branches meet the needs of Hispanic customers.

The Cleveland-based bank is launching community boards, which will be made up of employees ranging from tellers to executives. Each team will make decisions about how National City's financial literacy programs and financial services can be tailored to the Latino community in their area.

National City already has started community boards in Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cleveland and Cinncinnati, as well as Illinois, and wants to give Dayton's growing population more attention.

"Our focus is empowering people at the local market to make decisions that will better our relations with the Latino customer," said Cristian Sandoval, vice president and director of Hispanic initiatives at National City. "We have been forming local teams of Latinos or bilinguals who work at the bank and want to serve their communities. They have a passion for the community, so we want to grab that passion and make it work for the customers."

In addition, the boards will seek out possible alliances with local groups. In Dayton, the obvious alliances are with the Greater Dayton Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, two national groups that have partnered with the boards in other cities, according to Sandoval.

The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce already has partnered with Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp to develop a national program called Capital that helps make funds available to small businesses that are chamber members.

The Hispanic population of Dayton is a hard number to pin down, but the U.S. Census Bureau said the Hispanic population grew 56 percent in Montgomery County alone between 1990 and 2000, and by some estimates, there are now 25,000 Hispanics living in the Miami Valley.

Sandoval said that Latinos are less likely to be saving at the average levels of the rest of the population because of a lack of knowledge of financial issues as well as a lack of familiarity with the financial system.

"Our objective is to teach them the benefits of building a strong financial foundation, the importance of owning a home versus renting and establishing credit," Sandoval said. "There are other organizations in the market and they are not doing this approach, not because it doesn't work but because they haven't focused on it the way we have. We think it will change the face of the Hispanic market in the financial services sector."

National City also announced in May that it had joined forces with First American Corp. and the MSN Latino "Finanzas" Personal Finance Center to become the preferred mortgage lender, offering its National Dream Mortgage product on the site. The product offers flexible options on income and credit that benefit customers who may have had trouble qualifying for a mortgage before.

Other financial institutions in the Miami Valley also are reaching out to the Hispanic market.

Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp has mortgage and deposit products in Spanish, and is slowly increasing the number of Spanish-speaking employees in its local branches. But the bank has not been as aggressive in targeting the Hispanic community in Dayton as it has in other cities such as Chicago, according to Diana Schoenberger, vice president of marketing. Only some of the newer ATMs in the area are Spanish language equipped.

In September of last year, U.S. Bank announced that it was stepping up the recruitment of bilingual employees in the Dayton area and now has 14 in branches from Lebanon to Tipp City, as well as a 24-hour assistance line available in Spanish, a Spanish version of its Web site and Spanish language options on its ATMs.

National City is the third-largest bank in the Dayton area with 42 branches and $1.56 billion in local deposits.

Source: Dayton Business Journal