Trump meets with community bankers

President Trump met with community bankers to discuss what the White House described as regulatory burdens facing smaller financial institutions under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn hosted bankers representing the American Bankers Association (ABA) and Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) on Thursday morning.

Trump said smaller banks “play a vital role in helping create jobs” and promised to roll back stifling regulations.

“You’ll be able to loan. You’ll be able to be safe. … You’ll be able to provide the jobs that we want and also create great businesses,” Trump said, according to pool reports.

Trump has promised to “dismantle” Dodd-Frank, but has offered few details on how he’d do it. He signed two executive orders last month directing agencies to find ways to unravel the law that so far have yielded no fundamental changes.

Even so, banking leaders praised Trump after the meeting for being open and knowledgeable about the issues facing their firms.

ICBA President Camden Fine called the huddle “the most open, free-flowing White House meeting I’ve ever attended,” and said the discussion focused on loan and mortgage regulations.

“He was able to speak the language of business and engage with CEOs around the table and engage at the granular level on specific regulations,” Fine told Bloomberg TV. “There was no script.”

Here’s a list of the meeting’s attendees, provided by the White House:

• Leslie R. Andersen, CEO of Bank of Bennington

• Kenneth L. Burgess, Jr., Chairman FirstCapital Bank of Texas

• Luanne Cundiff, CEO of First State Bank of St. Charles

• Camden “Cam” Fine, President and CEO of Independent Community Bankers of America

• Scott Heitkamp, CEO of ValueBank

• Robert Stanley Nichols, CEO of American Bankers Association

• Rebeca Romero Rainey, CEO of Centinel Bank of Taos

• Dorothy A. Savarese, CEO Cape Cod Five Mutual Company

• Laura Lee Stewart, CEO Sound Community Bank and Sound Financial Bancorp

• Jeffrey M. Szyperski, Vice Chairman of Chesapeake Financial Services, Inc.

• Timothy Zimmerman, CEO of Standard Bank.