Los Robles V.P. on Loan to Swiss Bank Returns With Interest

Some travelers visit Switzerland to admire the Alps, some to take in the centuries-old architecture, some to sample the chocolate. For Sharon Clark, however, the real lures are bank deposits, assets, loans and other things financial.

Clark, vice president of commercial banking for Los Robles Bank of Westlake Village, spent a recent trip to the European country hanging out with officials of Credit Suisse bank.

A foreign exchange student of sorts, Clark was a guest at several of the financial giant’s offices spread from Zurich to Geneva, where she exchanged banking strategies with her Swiss counterparts.

During her weeklong stay, Clark discovered advantages to both the Swiss and American styles of banking and found that bank executives from both continents could learn from each other’s methods.

“We’re a bank of $153 million in assets and I go to this bank that’s about $500 billion,” she said. “The international capital of banking is Switzerland, but they were interested in having me visit and learning some of the American banking style. We were very fortunate to be invited.”

The invitation wasn’t a complete surprise.

For the past two years, Los Robles Bank has played host to Credit Suisse officials for several months at a time, giving them a chance to observe firsthand the way a smaller, community-based bank does business. The visits were part of the Swiss bank’s program to study the way banks function in the United States.

“What they wanted their officers to experience was how American bankers treat their customers, the hands-on customer service,” Clark said.

“Officers of Credit Suisse were only calling on their better accounts once a year, maybe when it was time to renew a loan,” she said. “But to compete, they needed to do that more, keep in touch, cultivate new clients. That was an area of real interest.”

With more than 63,000 workers spread over 32 countries and with a 20% European market share, Credit Suisse understandably lacks the small-town feel of the three-branch Los Robles institution.

But Clark said that for the bank to continue at the top of its industry, it may well have to take a more personal approach. Finding out the individual needs of business and personal clients is critical to attracting and retaining business in a globally competitive market, she said.

“Everything is very thorough there, but because of that, business tends to be more cold,” she said. “I think that they really know that to continue to increase their market share, they have to focus on [increasing] their equity. For a bank to do that in a certain amount of time, they must get competitive.”

Over the past couple of years, Clark has tried sharing her personal philosophy and that of Los Robles Bank with the Swiss bankers.

“Basically, the way you grow your corporation is to know the client,” she said.

“As a banker, I’m going to learn about how a [corporate client] works. Are they in a cash flow rut? What is the best way for them to move forward?” she said. “I’ll offer projections. We’ll identify long-term financing.”

While Clark demonstrated more personalized banking, she took home from Switzerland a picture of what a massive institution can do and how it can translate to a smaller operation.

To Clark, the most striking aspects of the Credit Suisse operation were the institution’s efficiency through advanced technology and the use of online banking, its international banking division, and its effort to cater to the upper echelon of corporate and personal clients.

“They have technology that’s miles and miles ahead of us,” she said. “They are pretty much a paperless society. They don’t use checks. They use ATM cards, Euro cards and are much more efficient. Millions of transactions go through there each day. . . . Even though that technology is still distant in our future, it’s got to start coming on.”

Los Robles Bank is not about to go paperless any time soon, but the efficiency associated with the Swiss banking structure is something to admire, Clark said.

So too, she said, is the way Credit Suisse manages its international clients.

“It was fun to see the way they do business with overseas clients,” she said. “Even though they’re way beyond our scope of international banking, we should be able to provide an international component. You have to do that today.”

In 1998, Los Robles Bank took an important step in that direction by hiring an international trade consultant to work with its corporate clientele.

“With most people who are going to need our services, if they are expanding, some of their clients are now in Asia or Europe,” Clark said. “They need to ship to them; they need documentary letters of credit. . . . They have to have the expertise because it has to be just right. We entered this area because people are expanding globally.”

The other area that Clark found of particular interest during her time abroad was Credit Suisse’s Private Banking division. In that division, the bank’s most affluent clients--mostly corporate--are provided with personalized investment counseling and asset management.

“Focusing so much on that [segment] really could be a backbone for them,” Clark said. “In the Private Banking unit, they give credit advice, insurance advice, estate planning; they help monitor the investment portfolio. They actually have the expertise in their Private Banking unit to give them almost a financial planner.”

Despite the time she spent inside bank buildings, Clark said she did get a good taste of the Swiss culture that will help both in the financial world and her personal life.

“Standing in another culture’s shoes expands tolerance and shrinks the ‘it’s them against us’ feeling,” she said. “The whole experience was special.”