Chilberg on banking’s ‘front line’
When Skip Chilberg joined AmericanWest Bank in December 2004, he had to contend with someone out of his life for more than 20 years: a boss.
As the Spokane County treasurer, then commissioner, Chilberg answered to no one but the voters. After his appointment to the Eastern Washington Growth Management Hearings Board, he rarely dealt with Olympia.
But as community reinvestment officer at AmericanWest, he reports to two bosses; Chief Legal Counsel, R. Blair Reynolds, and Chief Executive Officer Robert Daugherty.
“That’s been quite an adjustment,” says Chilberg, who looks unbankerlike in a casual shirt and short, grey beard.
He’s responsible for AmericanWest’s compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, a federal law passed in 1977 to stop “red-lining” by banks that would not lend in certain areas not matter how qualified the applicant. Since then, regulators have graded banks on service to low- and moderate-income households, and underserved communities. Low ratings can affect a bank’s ability to expand, or to acquire or be acquired by another bank.
AmericanWest has been rated “satisfactory” for several years. Chilberg says he was hired to take the bank to the next level.
AmericanWest expanded aggressively during the 1990s, eventually creating a footprint spanning much of central and eastern Washington, with a toehold in North Idaho. Chilberg started by looking at the demographics in all the communities with AmericanWest branches.
Despite his 62 years growing up and working in the region, Chilberg says he was surprised by what he found. Large percentages of households from Yakima to Kellogg survive on incomes less than 80 percent of the median.
He had seen need before, with the Northwest Regional Foundation and leading his church’s efforts to help Romanian orphans. He continues to work on Eastern European reconstruction, and has made a dozen trips to the nation of Georgia.
Although looking at community problems from a banker’s point of view was new, Chilberg had already engaged issues like housing while sitting on 12 different community boards. He chaired six.
“This position is really more public service than it is banking,” he says of his role at AmericanWest.
But it is banking, Chilberg says, and AmericanWest and other banks do not finance housing projects or small businesses to lose money.
Among the projects the bank has supported is the purchase and rehabilitation of 15 units of senior housing in Davenport by Spokane Housing Ventures. AmericanWest has also contributed to a Shoshone Medical Center study of employee housing needs.
Direct loans for business and housing are just part of the mission, Chilberg says.
He says the bank also provides operating funds to various community groups that provide services to low-income households, and he encourages bank employees to become active in those organizations. Chilberg says his job has given him a chance to solve problems that, as a county commissioner, he could not address.
“This is really front line work,” he says. “Here, you can really get your hands dirty.”