Awful Truth

After years of work on deicing, U.S. bankers had expected a warm image of themselves in the public mind. But when the American Bankers Association in January got back a year-long public opinion survey, it was so disturbed that it refused to reveal the results. Last week Charles A. Eaton Jr., president of the New Jersey Bankers Association, told a meeting of financial public-relations men some of the awful truth.

The collective portrait of the banker, said Eaton, is that of a man who is "austere, respected, conservative, competent and distant. The public feels little emotional rapport with him." Said one of those interviewed: "The average banker to me is a stuffed shirt. He would like those people who came in with a lot of money. He wouldn't pay any mind to the average guy who came in without too much dough."

What really hurt was a revelation of how poorly the public understands the function of banks. About 50% thought that a commercial bank was solely for "businessmen," some 34% could not define a mutual savings bank, and 40% believed that savings and loan associations were banks. As a result, suggested Banker Eaton, the big push by U.S. bankers to get people to save (TIME, Feb. 4) may be helping the savings and loan associations as much as it helps the banks.

Further compounding the confusion, high-spending consumers still hold a traditional moral attitude toward saving as a virtue and borrowing as an evil. That attitude, they think, is exactly the one held by bankers. Since people feel guilty about personal borrowing, they believe that the "typical" moralistic banker is likely to turn them down. Thus, they often turn to finance companies for "unworthy" borrowing, such as auto loans, instead of to banks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.