Census Day 2010

Back on November 22, 2009 I posted an entry ("Community Banks and the 2010 Census") about the importance of the Census for communities such as East Los Angeles and Santa Ana - the Bank's two service areas.  Since Census Day 2010 is one month away (April 1, 2010) I thought I would provide an update to my earlier commentary.

As I stated back in November, the Census count determines how approximately $400 billion is disbursed across a multitude of federal programs.  The larger the population, the larger the portion of the pot.  As such, communities benefit by an accurate count and are penalized by an undercount.  The City of Los Angeles estimated that it lost out on roughly $20 million per year as a result of the 2000 Census undercount.

In the January/February issue of Hispanic Business Magazine Rob Kuznia addressed the challenges faced in obtaining an accurate census count ("Census Budget Bigger Than Ever, But Some Officials Predict a Miscount").  According to Mr. Kuznia, "at about $15 billion, the outlay for the once-a-decade event is nearly three times the amount of the Census budget in 2000.  Still, prominent experts predict that the 2010 Census will overlook many more people than the one in 2000, which undercounted the U.S. population by millions."  Yikes!  Three times the budget but fewer counted?  What's up with that?

Back in November I stated that "as a local corporate citizen it is in our best interest to maximize investment dollars in our community. Investments boost the standard of living of our customers, attract additional investments into the community and generate the need for financial products and services provided by community banks."  In his article Mr. Kuznia quoted Clara Rodriguez, a sociology professor at Fordham University and author of "Changing Race: Latinos, the Census and the History of Ethnicity in the United States," who concurred.  According to Ms. Rodriguez, "There's always been a lot of activity around this, but that activity in the past has been in the background, not at the forefront.  Now it's much more in the open.  I think more and more people are realizing how important the Census is."

Census officials estimate that the 2010 edition of the Census will show 306 million Americans of which 46 million will be Latino.  If accurate, that figure will show a rise in Latinos from 12.5% at 2000 to 15% in 2010.  Further, Census predictions show Latinos growing to between 21 and 31 percent of the total population by 2050.  That means up to one-third of the U.S. population will be Latino in 40 years. 

With roughly 40% of Latino household unbanked or underbanked, according to a recent FDIC study, I'd say this little Latino bank has its work cut out for it.

2W3DN5PDERGH

A Sort Of New Year's Resolution

The posting below was taken from an email sent by me on January 1, 2010, to Bank stakeholders.  I thought I would also share it here since it contains some information worth sharing.

# # #

When I joined Pan American Bank in June, I stated that I wanted to make Pan American Bank THE bank of East Los Angeles. Having been born in Boyle Heights and raised in East L.A., I jumped at the opportunity to come back to East Los with the tools I had acquired working around the country. The bulletpoints above are not new year's resolutions because they will not be accomplished in one year. They are, however, goals that I have established for the Bank to work on. Not by itself, but in collaboration with others in the community. We're a very small bank...but with the right partnerships we can create tremendous change.

I know you are busy and have little time for touchy-feely e-mails such as this. But please indulge me for three minutes as I share what 2010 will bring to East Los Angeles from Pan American Bank's perspective.



1) LatinoGraduate.net: In January, LatinoGraduate.net, a new media nonprofit focused on getting Latino youth into college and keeping them there until graduation, will be moving into Pan American Bank's corporate headquarters. The Bank will be donating a portion of its space to permit LatinoGraduate.net to tape and broadcast its shows. The Bank will host a Open House Celebration on Friday, February 5, 2010, from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. RSVP to Tony Ramirez if you did not receive an e-mail invitation.

2) VELA: January brings a second nonprofit to Pan American Bank. VELA, an East Los Angeles-based powerhouse nonprofit, will be operating a technical assistance center from the Bank's headquarters. The program will provide technical assistance to both nonprofits and small businesses. This effort will be a collaboration between not only VELA and Pan American Bank, but many other organizations that will bring essential resources to bear.

3) Institute for Nonprofit Leadership: Pan American Bank, VELA and the Riordan Volunteer Leadership Development Program will launch in September 2010 the Institute for Nonprofit Leadership. The Institute for Nonprofit Leadership will train young professionals from eastern Los Angeles County on how to serve as leaders of nonprofits, with a focus on serving on nonprofits located in eastern Los Angeles County. The Riordan program has been extremely successful with participants from downtown and the westside and will now collaborate with Pan American Bank and VELA to roll out a similar program at the Bank's corporate headquarters in East Los Angeles.

4) Financial Services Advisory Council of East Los Angeles: In January the Bank will kick of its Financial Services Advisory Council of East Los Angeles ("FSAC-ELA"). The role of the FSAC-ELA will be to bring together local stakeholders to develop strategies that address the shortcomings cited in the FDIC's recent Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households. As the only bank headquartered in East Los Angeles, Pan American Bank is taking a leadership role in working with the offices of elected officials, nonprofits and residents, to bring mainstream banking services to as many East Los Angeles households as possible. The FSAC-ELA will be comprised of representatives from throughout the East Los Angeles community.

5) UCLA School of Urban Planning: At the end of this email is an e-mail to me from Raul Lugo. Raul is a graduate student in the UCLA School of Urban Planning. Raul will graduate in June. He and a team of classmates have formed a company that will be attacking some of the issues we face in East Los Angeles. Raul and his associates will bring to East Los Angeles energy, enthusiasm and a new set of eyes. When I was fresh out of UCLA someone took a chance on me and provided me with the mentorship that helped me succeed in my professional career. I hope to do the same. But more than that, I encourage you to read his email and engage him in thought provoking discussion. Only through such discussion will issues and challenges surface and get worked out. If the Bank has any shot at achieving the goals above, it will only come through collaboration.

There is much more in the works but I'll save that for another day. While 2009 was a challenging year for banks, it also provided tremendous opportunities. As a bank we have a lot of work ahead of us. Just the daily challenge of bringing in new deposits and making new loans is enough to fill our plates. But Pan American Bank is not just any bank. It has a mission that is unique and a story that needs to be told if we are to be THE BANK OF EAST LOS ANGELES.

Before I conclude, I would like to publicly congratulate the team at Pan American Bank. In 2009, the Bank did not foreclose on a single borrower and in 2008 it had only one foreclosure. While the Bank did modify some loans, the Bank's goal was to do everything possible to keep our customers in their homes. We don't know what 2010 will bring but we look to have similar successes this time next year.

Best wishes to you all in 2010. On behalf of the employees, shareholders and customers of Pan American Bank, Thank You for your continued support. May all of our goals be achieved this year so that we can look back on this year with a smile.

Jesse Torres
President and CEO
Pan American Bank
3626 East First Street
Los Angeles, CA 90063
(323) 264-3310
(323) 264-8057 fax

"The mission of Pan American Bank is to transform and empower Latino communities through banking relationships built on trust, service, respect, communication, and guidance."

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: raul lugo
Date: Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 8:14 PM
Subject: New Year Resolution
To: jtorres@panamericanbank.us

Jesse,

We will create a movement with inventive and diverse approaches to the rebuilding of our community. This will be done through targeted investments, which will need to be meticulously and assertively planned for success due to the present scarcity of resources. Our efforts are aimed to creatively effect change in East Los Angeles. These investments will be made in a broad range of areas such as housing, small business formation and development, and economic development at large.

Investors look first for the formal investment targets due to their familiarity. The traditional channels offer a formal infrastructure friendly to business that simply does not exist in the inner cities of America. As a result, these communities suffer from diminished services and struggling institutions. Private investment in these communities often comes from the people who live there themselves. These entrepreneurial ventures emerge as a result of necessity due to the lack of support and disinterest from mainstream investment. The goal is to identify many investment targets with a strong potential for profits. We need to create a new paradigm of profitable, sound and constructive investments outside of traditional channels. We need strong leaders who have decided that they will take the chance with us and place their valuable investment in this energetic community.

We are currently learning the limits of government involvement. California faces bankruptcy amidst the worst budget crisis, and public funds are simply insufficient to meet the needs of the population. The aid and subsidies that trickles down through a complicated bureaucratic process is proving to be ineffective. This means our team will have to shift the level of sophistication and inventiveness to be the group that seeks investments for the community of East Los Angeles.

The business sector is an integral partner in the economic development of East Los Angeles. As grants and donations diminish in economic downturns like the one we are experiencing, agencies that seek to fill gaps in services need to tap into their entrepreneurial capabilities to survive. Financial institutions are of particular importance because they need to broaden their perspective on the types of investments they are willing to consider. Promoting small business creation, we can create sound and profitable deals, even with people who have little or no education about conventional business establishments. In this process, we will need to inform the population about the importance of civic participation to build transparency, and trust through dialogue between different community stakeholders that would have otherwise never exchanged ideas with one another. We will harness a conscious smart growth movement in East Los Angeles to make the United States free enterprise system responsive to the needs of the community by building a resilient and sustainable network to support new enterprises.

Happy new year, let's make it a good one.

Raul