BANKING

Bankers’ Conventions: After a year of fighting the recession and the regulators, community bankers are looking forward to a little escape to annual conventions. But even with that, there is a problem: which one to attend.

The Independent Bankers Assn. of America’s annual gathering is next week in San Diego, and the trade group’s regional office in Newport Beach is busy making last-minute arrangements.

As the IBAA meeting ends March 13, the Western Independent Bankers Assn., which caters to bankers in California and eight other western states, will be starting its convention in Hawaii.

Where are community bankers going? To Hawaii, if they had a good year and can justify the trip, some bankers say. Others may be politic and go to both.

J.B. Crowell, chairman of Eldorado Bank in Tustin, is on IBAA’s board of directors, but he’ll be going to the WIB meeting while one of his top executives goes to the IBAA convention.

“I wish they wouldn’t schedule them at the same time,” Crowell said. “Both conventions have a lot to offer, both in educational aspects and in networking.”

But what he really wishes, he said, is that the groups would merge.

“There are too many bank trade associations,” he said, rattling off nearly a dozen groups regionally, statewide and nationally that look to community banks for their main membership.