Nebraska regulators pass peer review, director takes seat on FFIEC Nebraska's lead bank regulator praised professional peer review after the Conference of State Bank Supervisors re-accredited his department for a fourth five-year certification. "I don't know where else we could go to get this kind of feedback," said John Munn, director of the Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance. "We're an examiner of financial institutions, and I think it's good for us to be examined."

CSBS re-accreditation required on-site examinations by a team of veteran state and federal regulators, which included former directors of banking from Texas and Colorado. The department also submits to annual evaluations in which CSBS tracks "where we're at in our examination schedules, that our staffing is still adequate, that our funding is appropriate for the supervision we need to provide," Munn said. "It's all focused on our bank supervision, as far as how we administer the function, how we handle our assessments and examination fees, how we train our personnel, how promptly we conduct and wrap up examinations."

Ray Pont, deputy director, leads the department's ongoing accreditation efforts, Munn said.

Earlier this year, Munn was elected to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council to represent state regulators. The council was created by Congress in 1979 but included no voting position for state regulators until 2006, when Munn's predecessor, Massachusetts Commissioner of Banking Steven Antonakes, became the council's first voting state representative. As chair of the FFIEC's State Liaison Committee, which consists of banking commissioners as well as state credit union and savings bank supervisors, Munn joins Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, OTS Director John Reich, OCC Chairman John Dugan and the recently confirmed National Credit Union Administration Chairman Michael Fryzel, as a full voting member of the council.

As in other corporate endeavors, community relations thrive when employees put some skin in the game. That's basically what Jim Badgero, assistant vice president and office manager at Ionia, Mich.- based Independent Bank, did when he offered to buzz his hair down to the scalp-but only if his teams at the Newaygo and Croton offices beat their fundraising goals for the American Cancer Society. The teams pledged to raise $2,500 for Newaygo County's Relay for Life, the Society's round-the-clock relay walk. By adding the contributions of the nearby White Cloud branch, the team went $700 over the top-and the top is now lighter for Badgero.