Public Meeting Regarding Citicorp and Travelers Group
Friday, June 26, 1998
Transcript of Panel Twenty-One
|
Public Meeting Regarding Citicorp and Travelers Group |
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20 MR. LONEY: Any other questions? If
21 not, I thank you, our panel, very much.
22 We are going to combine Panel
23 Twenty-one and Twenty-two. Could I ask Edward
24 Sheeran, Vicki Hurewitz, April Tyler, Greg Todd
25 and Florence Rice to come up, please.
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2 Mr. Sheeran, will you begin for us,
3 please.
4 MR. SHEERAN: Thank you. Good
5 morning. I am Edward Sheeran. I am special
6 assistant to the Mayor of the City of Yonkers,
7 Westchester County. I am also the executive
8 director of the Yonkers Industrial Development
9 Agency.
10 The City of Yonkers is the largest
11 city in Westchester County and the fourth
12 largest in the State of New York with
13 approximately 190,000 residents. Yonkers has
14 the largest number of high poverty level census
15 tracts in the County of Westchester. For over
16 a decade the New York State Financial Control
17 Board has been overseeing the city's financial
18 activities.
19 Citibank, one of the nation's largest
20 banking institutions, serves the residents of
21 the County of Westchester with 18 full service
22 branch banking facilities. The areas Citibank
23 has elected to service within Westchester
24 County are affluent upscale areas. These areas
25 are as follows:
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2 Armonk, Bedford, Bronxville,
3 Chappaqua, Eastchester, Harrison, Hastings,
4 Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Mount Kisco, New
5 Rochelle, Ossining, Pelham Manor, Rye,
6 Scarsdale, Somers and two branches in White
7 Plains.
8 Last year Citibank opted to close its
9 only manned branch in the City of Yonkers.
10 Accordingly, Citibank has no manned facilities
11 to provide day-to-day banking services to the
12 190,000 residents of the largest city in the
13 County of Westchester.
14 Recently I spoke with Citibank's
15 Westchester County senior management regarding
16 Citibank's redlining of the City of Yonkers. I
17 was advised that it was Citibank's strategy to
18 provide banking services to its customers
19 through technology rather than bricks and
20 mortar and that Citibank would not be adding
21 additional branch facilities to its network.
22 This statement was contradicted
23 following a Craines June 15, 1998 publication
24 when it reported that Citibank had branches
25 under construction in the State of New Jersey
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2 and, in particular, in Fort Lee and Englewood.
3 Clearly, Citibank's strategy is to
4 provide day-to-day personal banking services to
5 affluent upscale communities and to ignore the
6 day-to-day banking needs of the less affluent
7 communities. We believe its Westchester
8 network of branches is an orchestrated example
9 of this and proves that the 190,000 residents
10 of the City of Yonkers are not being given the
11 same banking convenience that are provided by
12 Citibank to towns, villages, and hamlets within
13 the County of Westchester.
14 We, in the City of Yonkers believe in
15 addition to providing day-to-day banking
16 services, large financial institutions such as
17 Travelers Group and Citicorp should be obliged
18 as good citizens to participate in the economic
19 revitalization of cities, such as the City of
20 Yonkers. We believe they should utilize their
21 vast resources, both financial and otherwise,
22 to promote, encourage and finance economic
23 development. By doing this, they will be
24 contributing to the creation of jobs and
25 increasing the quality of life for all our
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2 citizens.
3 Citibank's activities to date have
4 been to the contrary. The future must be based
5 on past performance. Frankly, we are not
6 satisfied with the manner in which our city has
7 been ignored and our citizens treated by the
8 powerful Citibank.
9 Should the acquisition be approved,
10 Citibank will be the largest and most powerful
11 institution in the country. This may be very
12 good for the affluent upscale areas, but if
13 Citibank's past is any indication of the
14 future, then our 190,000 residents in the
15 largest city of Westchester County can expect
16 more of the same from the nation's most
17 powerful financial institution.
18 I am here today on behalf of the
19 citizens of Yonkers to request that the
20 approval of the acquisition of Citicorp by
21 Travelers Group be denied until such time as
22 Citibank institutes and delivers programs that
23 provide services to the citizens of the City of
24 Yonkers equal to the services they provide to
25 the citizens of the 18 affluent upscale
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2 communities in the County of Westchester.
3 Thank you.
4 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Mr. Sheeran.
5 Ms. Hurewitz.
6 MS. HUREWITZ: Good morning
7 distinguished members of the Federal Reserve
8 Board. Thank you for giving me this
9 opportunity to express my opinion about the
10 Citicorp/Travelers merger. My name is Vicki
11 Hurewitz, and I am here representing the
12 organization SENSES, which stands for the
13 Statewide Emergency Network for Social and
14 Economic Security.
15 We work on a variety of public policy
16 issues which affect low-income people here in
17 New York State. SENSES is a member of the
18 National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
19 As I thought and read about the
20 Citicorp/Travelers merger and HR10, the
21 financial modernization bill that would allow
22 the merger if passed, I decided there were
23 three questions I wanted to address in my
24 testimony.
25 First, if this were a standard
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2 mega-merger like so many we have seen lately,
3 how are these two institutions doing in terms
4 of their fair lending and community
5 reinvestment obligations under current law? A
6 merger can be denied if either party has not
7 met these obligations.
8 Second, I am puzzled as to how this
9 merger can occur since HR10, the financial
10 modernization bill, is still making its way
11 through Congress.
12 Third, what are the most important
13 issues around HR10 that should be addressed
14 before the law passes?
15 How are the institutions doing under
16 the mortgage law? The Home Mortgage Disclosure
17 Act requires Citicorp and all its lending
18 subsidiaries and affiliates to report out
19 detailed information on every home purchase,
20 home improvement, and refinance application
21 taken.
22 Using 1996 HMDA data, I performed a
23 limited analysis on Citibank's lending in all
24 the metropolitan areas of New York State. I
25 only examined those markets where an individual
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2 institution took more than 30 applications,
3 statisticians considering this an ample sample
4 size.
5 I compared the market penetration of
6 Citicorp entities among black borrowers to all
7 categories of borrowers. I also compared the
8 bank's loan denial rate to black versus white
9 applicants to the same rate for all lenders in
10 the individual markets. The reason I only
11 looked at these particular indicators is that I
12 am still in the process of database
13 development. In the future I will able to look
14 at many more indicators of bank lending
15 performance around the state.
16 Three Citibank entities, Citibank New
17 York State, Citibank Mortgage and Citibank NA
18 accepted applications for home purchase loans
19 in 1996. Citibank NA is minimally active in
20 two markets upstate, Buffalo and Rochester.
21 The other two lenders are primarily downstate
22 in the New York City and Long Island areas.
23 With the exception of Citibank New
24 York State in the two upstate markets, all the
25 Citibank entities had a lower market share of
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2 black applications than of all applications.
3 In all areas for all the Citibank entities, the
4 loan denial rates to black versus white
5 borrowers were higher than the rates for all
6 lenders in the markets. In Rochester, for
7 example, blacks were denied at over nine times
8 the rate of whites compared to 1.8 times as
9 often for the aggregate lenders.
10 These same patterns occurred in
11 Citibank's Home Improvement and Refinance
12 applications. Again, with home improvement
13 applications Citibank New York State was active
14 upstate and Citibank NA downstate. And in all
15 cases market penetration was lower than among
16 black borrowers than white. With the exception
17 of Citibank NA in the Long Island area, loans
18 were denied to blacks at slightly higher rates
19 than to whites, although the differences are
20 not as marked as they were with home purchase
21 loans. The same thing was true with the
22 refinance application.
23 Travelers Insurance Company unlike
24 Citibank is not required to report under HMDA
25 nor is it covered by the Community Reinvestment
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2 Act. It is, however, covered by the Fair
3 Housing Act of 1968.
4 Currently HUD is investigating a Fair
5 Housing complaint brought by the Fair Housing
6 Council of Washington D.C. The complaint
7 alleges that the company's policies have a
8 discriminatory impact on African-American and
9 Latino policy seekers and neighborhoods. In
10 the D.C. area, Travelers has a policy whereby
11 the minimum house value that it will insure is
12 $250,000. This automatically excludes from
13 coverage 90 percent of homes in
14 African-American and Latino neighborhoods.
15 Travelers also -- is my time up?
16 Travelers also has a policy of
17 limiting coverage to homes which are less than
18 45 years old. This has the impact of excluding
19 almost twice as many homes in minority
20 neighborhoods as in white neighborhoods.
21 Interestingly, Washington D.C. is one
22 of the four cities that has been in Travelers
23 Urban Availability of Insurance program, a
24 program which was founded 1994 to improve the
25 availability of insurance in urban areas. I
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2 wonder what the company's policy would be in
3 Washington D.C. without this program.
4 Given that Travelers has this suit
5 pending against it and given my HMDA findings
6 on Citibank, I am convinced that even if this
7 were a standard mega-merger, it should not be
8 allowed until these fair lending issues are
9 addressed.
10 Regarding Citibank, I am well aware
11 that the Community Reinvestment Act is mostly
12 about making credit available in low- and
13 moderate-income areas. However, it is stated
14 in the legislation that "in arriving at an
15 institution's (CRA) rating, the agencies
16 consider whether there is evidence of
17 discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing
18 Act or the Equal Credit Opportunity Act or
19 evidence of other illegal credit activities."
20 I am also aware that HMDA has never
21 been used to prove discrimination; however, as
22 my analysis shows, the data can point to
23 patterns that need further investigation.
24 Before going on with this merger, I
25 request that HUD investigate Travelers'
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2 underwriting criteria in other urban areas
3 where it writes policies to determine if there
4 are possible hidden discriminatory patterns
5 that prevent protected classes from getting
6 property insurance. I also request that the
7 Federal Reserve look at Citicorp entities
8 underwriting criteria for the three HMDA
9 reportable loan types to see what is
10 responsible for the bank's poor showing among
11 black borrowers across New York State.
12 How could this merger occur -- time
13 is up.
14 MR. LONEY: If you want to wrap up.
15 MS. HUREWITZ: I will continue.
16 I just want to say, I am opposed to
17 the merger for three reasons: The fair lending
18 records of the two applicants, the illegality
19 of the merger, and the potential power of HR10
20 to destabilize the American economy.
21 Thank you very much.
22 MR. LONEY: Thank you.
23 If you want to put your full
24 statement in, it will get into the record if
25 you will leave a copy with the registration
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2 desk up front.
3 MS. HUREWITZ: Thank you.
4 MR. LONEY: Ms. Tyler.
5 MS. TYLER: Good morning. My name is
6 April Tyler and I am a democratic leader in the
7 West Harlem community. On behalf of myself, my
8 coleader Joseph Aplin and the residents of
9 Harlem's 70th Assembly District, I thank you
10 for the opportunity to testify and present
11 information on Citibank's record in the Harlem
12 community and to register my objection to this
13 proposed merger.
14 I will focus on the core lending
15 record in Harlem, but I'd like to reiterate a
16 few points that have been covered in prior
17 testimony by many of my colleagues and many of
18 Citicorp Travelers Watch.
19 This transaction is illegal, as the
20 prior testifier just stated. The public's
21 privacy rights may be trampled on. Both
22 institutions have not been forthcoming with
23 information that's been requested numerous
24 times, and we feel the danger of creating such
25 a large international financial entity, a
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2 portion of which is protected by U.S.
3 taxpayers' dollars, may be deemed too big to
4 fail.
5 The companies' individual records
6 with regard to inner city neighborhoods leaves
7 much to be desired. Travelers has virtually no
8 brokers in low- and moderate-income
9 neighborhoods, and Citicorp has few branches
10 and does almost no lending. This hardly bodes
11 well to a more promising future with the
12 proposed new entity.
13 On the prior panel, one of the
14 panelists stated that we must look to the
15 future, but we must also not ignore the
16 history. So let's take a look at Citibank's
17 history in the Harlem community and other
18 communities of color.
19 The loan rejection rates are more
20 than doubled that of whites given comparable
21 circumstances. In the Harlem community, which
22 is Community Boards 9 and 10, which are bounded
23 by 110th Street, 155th Street from Riverside
24 Drive to Fifth Avenue, there are only two
25 branches. One branch is on 111th Street and
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2 Broadway and another branch is on 152nd Street
3 and Amsterdam Avenue. No branches are north of
4 125th Street where the majority of the
5 African-American and Latino population lives.
6 One might think that this area was
7 excluded from Citibank's service area, but it
8 is not. In the two branches, that are
9 inconveniently placed for the majority of the
10 populations in these two community boards,
11 there are $233 million on deposit; there is no
12 direct lending for multifamily housing at all
13 by Citibank; and, as we all know, the majority
14 of New York City's housing stock is that type.
15 But what lending do they do? One- to
16 four-family mortgages, co-op and condo loans.
17 In Community Board 9, which is Central Harlem,
18 there were only three loans originated in 1996.
19 Community Board 9 did a little better: 27
20 loans were originated. That sounds really
21 good, but the majority of those loans were
22 originated in the area south of 125th Street,
23 right around Columbia University where the
24 majority of the population is white. Only six
25 loans of the 27 were to African-Americans or
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2 Latinos; one was to a Latino. So so much for
3 the prior panelist's statement about empowering
4 Latinos.
5 The banks that exist have high-fee
6 structures for banking services. The brochures
7 say that you can experience less expensive and
8 more convenient banking. Not so if you live in
9 the Harlem community. Given this record, it is
10 amazing that Citibank has received an
11 outstanding CRA rating.
12 The proposed new entity made a
13 commitment of $115 billion, but not to improve
14 in the areas stated above. There is no
15 guarantee that any of the money will be
16 targeted and invested in New York City or in
17 low-income neighborhoods.
18 More than half of that $115 billion
19 commitment is for consumer loans, student
20 loans, credit cards and such. The portion for
21 small business lending isn't targeted to
22 low-income areas.
23 We urge you to reject this
24 application and demand immediate improvement in
25 their performance right now, not some nebulous
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2 promise for the future.
3 Thank you.
4 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Ms. Tyler.
5 Mr. Todd.
6 MR. TODD: Good morning. My name is
7 Greg Todd. I am the marketing director with
8 BEC New Communities. I would like to thank the
9 Federal Reserve Bank of New York for sponsoring
10 this hearing today. I very much appreciate the
11 opportunity to speak on behalf of BEC New
12 Communities.
13 BEC is a 14-year-old community-based
14 nonprofit housing group. To date we have
15 developed about 900 units of housing from
16 city-owned properties. In so doing, we have
17 invested almost $100 million in the communities
18 of Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Sunset
19 Park. In addition, we have sold over 200 units
20 of ownership housing, including both
21 condominiums and two- and three-family homes.
22 BEC also sponsors a community-based credit
23 union with over 2,000 members and $2.2 million
24 in assets.
25 Our organization grew out of an
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2 interdenominational organizing effort. BEC
3 stands for "Brooklyn Ecumenical Cooperatives."
4 I personally came to Brooklyn about
5 20 years ago from Michigan. Before coming
6 here, I completed a masters in business
7 administration degree and worked briefly in a
8 bank. I had heard much of Citibank. I knew it
9 to be a leader in the area of consumer banking,
10 having been one of the first banks in the
11 nation to issue credit cards and one of the
12 first to make extensive use of automatic teller
13 machines.
14 I, in fact, had such faith in
15 Citibank that it is where I opened my checking
16 and savings account and where I currently have
17 a home mortgage.
18 Unfortunately, in recent years I feel
19 Citibank's vision has become less focused on
20 its home here in New York and more directed to
21 a national and international audience. For
22 example, the branch I used to keep my accounts
23 at on 13th Street and Fifth Avenue near Sunset
24 Park was sold to Home Savings Bank -- now a
25 part of Greenpoint Bank -- about 15 years ago.
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2 Shortly thereafter, Citibank expanded
3 the number of ATMs at its branch in Park Slope,
4 a more affluent area. This pattern appears
5 typical of what it is doing throughout the City
6 of New York.
7 Citibank maintained in 1996 20
8 branches in Brooklyn. That number,
9 incidentally, is now down to 15, of which only
10 12 are full service. The total amount of
11 deposits on these branches in 1996 was $2.1
12 billion.
13 According to the Home Mortgage
14 Disclosure Act provided by the RTK Foundation,
15 during 1996 Citibank received 1,228
16 applications from Brooklyn residents. Of
17 these, they actually approved 547 or about 44.5
18 percent of the applications taken. By
19 comparison, in 1996 among banks in Brooklyn
20 that took in at least ten applications, the
21 overall approval rate was 52 percent, 7.5
22 percentage points above Citibank's approval
23 rate.
24 Assuming an average loan amount of
25 $150,000, Citibank returned to its communities
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2 in Brooklyn about $82 million in mortgages in
3 1996. This amounts to about 3.9 cents in
4 lending for each dollar deposited by Brooklyn
5 residents.
6 I must add that of the over 200
7 mortgages or about $12 million in home mortgage
8 lending given to purchasers of BEC developed
9 homes none were granted by Citibank.
10 Similarly, of the $100 million in
11 construction lending used by BEC for
12 residential development in Brooklyn, none was
13 from Citibank.
14 As a leading community group in
15 Brooklyn, BEC feels that Citibank needs to do
16 better. Rather than reaching out to lend in
17 the developing countries around the globe, why
18 not lend in the developing neighborhoods in
19 Brooklyn, for many residents are immigrants who
20 left just those developing countries that
21 Citibank appears so eager to lend to.
22 We feel it is time that Citibank
23 returned to its role as an innovative leader
24 right here in New York. If Citibank wants to
25 take deposits of Brooklyn residents, we feel it
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2 should be willing to give back its fair share
3 in loans to the Brooklyn community.
4 Thank you for your consideration.
5 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Mr. Todd.
6 Ms. Rice.
7 MS. RICE: Yes. Good morning, and I
8 am glad to be here, and thank you for giving me
9 this opportunity.
10 I am Florence M. Rice, president of
11 the Harlem Consumer Education Council. I must
12 say I oppose -- I am opposed to the merger of
13 Citicorp Group and the Travelers Insurance
14 because of their practice of racism through
15 redlining and refusal to loan to
16 African-Americans.
17 I am very concerned with Citigroup
18 and the Citicorp and Travelers merger. I want
19 to see a better world, but we can't see a
20 better world with racism running rampant like
21 it still does.
22 Living in New York State all my life,
23 and at my age of 79, I understand very well
24 institutional and economic racism, as I have
25 experienced it in this country all my life,
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2 along with my brothers and sisters.
3 As slaves, African-Americans were
4 forced to build the wealth of this country for
5 the benefit of white Americans. Today I'm
6 going to speak to you about the three robbers
7 of African-Americans, and I think I would like
8 to say the speakers of City Watch are the ones
9 that has said many of the things that I have
10 said, so there is no sense in repeating it.
11 What I wanted to do, I wanted to do
12 something different. I call it the three
13 robbers of African-Americans; they are racism,
14 power and control.
15 The belief is that race is the
16 primary determiner of human traits and capacity
17 and that racial difference produced an inherent
18 superiority of a particular race. Many white
19 people practice racism in the corporate
20 world -- antagonism toward African-Americans,
21 especially as a result of the racist belief, a
22 belief in the superiority of the white race,
23 prejudice based on this, and the theory,
24 ability, to determine by these races in our
25 society.
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2 Race riot is caused by racial
3 dissension and hatred -- which is many times
4 perpetrated by the corporate world -- power,
5 and the ability to produce a result, possession
6 to control authority and influence others,
7 having such power of controlling groups, that's
8 what happens in today's world.
9 I would like to speak third on
10 control, the power of direct command under the
11 corporate CEOs and the board of directors,
12 because that is where much of this racism stems
13 from, the power of restraining, the power or
14 authority to manage the regulation of economic
15 activity, especially by the corporate world
16 direct, one that controls a means of
17 determining the policy of a business.
18 The records of Citicorp and certainly
19 Travelers speak for themselves. I'm deeply
20 concerned. Like someone here said, if we're
21 talking these large companies, I'm concerned it
22 carries this race, economic racism, and this
23 racism within their companies travelling the
24 world.
25 I'm looking to make this a better
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2 world. I am not looking to make it the kind of
3 world that I have grown up in and that I know
4 of. So, therefore, I would say I have spoken
5 quite differently, but I am speaking this way
6 because many of my colleagues here have really
7 expressed my feeling.
8 I just want to thank you that I could
9 be here. I will put this -- I can send it in.
10 Again, I will say I am very glad to be here. I
11 am 79. I haven't changed my opinion on the
12 banks and the redlining and Travelers, which
13 never dealt with our black community. So I
14 again am supporting some of the other speakers
15 that this merger -- because mergers don't help
16 community people, poor people, because they are
17 always looking to make the executives and make
18 themselves a trillion dollar bankroll, that
19 they can go off and live better than anyone
20 else.
21 Thank you, and I am a little angry.
22 MR. LONEY: Thank you, Ms. Rice. You
23 don't look angry.
24 I have a couple of questions.
25 Mr. Sheeran, could you describe for
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2 me -- and you probably did and I may have just
3 didn't quite understand it -- the demographics
4 of Yonkers. I am not familiar with Yonkers.
5 Is it a low-income community largely?
6 MR. SHEERAN: We have, the southwest
7 part of Yonkers is the low income. There are,
8 I think, six census tracts that are poverty
9 level. The city of is made up of about 40
10 percent African-Americans, 45 percent white,
11 and the rest others.
12 MR. LONEY: Are there any middle,
13 upper-income neighborhoods?
14 MR. SHEERAN: Yes, there are. In the
15 northeast part of Yonkers, yes.
16 MR. LONEY: Did I understand you to
17 say there are no Citicorp branches.
18 MR. SHEERAN: No Citicorp branches.
19 The only manned branch that they had they
20 closed last year and there is an automatic
21 teller machine in its place. We don't regard
22 that as a facility that they can transact their
23 business.
24 MR. ALVAREZ: You mentioned that when
25 City closed the branch in Yonkers it said it
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2 would replace it with technology; is that the
3 ATM?
4 MR. SHEERAN: That is correct.
5 MR. ALVAREZ: It is a single ATM, no
6 other ATMs in Yonkers?
7 MR. SHEERAN: They have no other ATMs
8 in the community, right. As I pointed out, all
9 the areas in Westchester County are all upscale
10 areas, Bronxville, Rye, all upscale areas.
11 MR. LONEY: Apparently in Yonkers
12 there are some upscale areas as well.
13 MR. SHEERAN: Yes, but they are not
14 as upscale as the Bronxvilles of the world.
15 MR. ALVAREZ: When City proposed to
16 close the branch, did you talk with them about
17 why they were closing?
18 MR. SHEERAN: I was not in this
19 position at that time, so I am not quite sure.
20 MR. LONEY: So upscale is in the eye
21 of the beholder.
22 MR. SHEERAN: Maybe.
23 MR. LONEY: That is interesting.
24 Ms. Hurewitz, I know you wanted to
25 talk about your views on the illegality of this
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2 merger. Do you want to expound on that?
3 MS. HUREWITZ: I'm concerned because
4 currently there is a bill going through
5 Congress, as we all know, the HR10, the
6 financial modernization bill, which would allow
7 this merger. Under the current law, my
8 understanding is that if Travelers and Citicorp
9 were to merge, one of the other would have
10 to -- Travelers would have to divest itself of
11 its nonbanking activities within two to five
12 years, or Citicorp would have to give up its
13 banking charter and become part of Travelers
14 Savings & Loan.
15 My concern is that if the merger goes
16 through that the waiver will be given, the
17 five-year waiver will be given, and in the
18 interim Citicorp and Travelers will continue to
19 lobby Congress to pass HR10, because it is not
20 quite clear whether the bill will go through
21 now. There is a lot of controversy about it.
22 So currently these two entities as
23 they sit are not legally allowed to merge as
24 they both are. One or both of them have to
25 make changes. That is my concern.
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2 MR. LONEY: Thank you.
3 Ms. Tyler, I am sorry, I am not that
4 good with the geography here. You explained
5 that there were, I think the implication of
6 what you said was there were two branches, was
7 that in Harlem, on the edge of Harlem? I
8 wasn't quite clear on that.
9 MS. TYLER: Depending on who you
10 speak with, the boundaries of Harlem are
11 different. Some people would say that it
12 starts at 110th Street, and if you look at
13 documents from way past, it did. Currently,
14 it's always been considered historically the
15 African-American community in the north of
16 Manhattan. The majority of the
17 African-Americans, and at this point
18 increasingly the Latino population, are north
19 of 125th Street. South of 125th Street you
20 have to include Columbia University, where even
21 though it is in the -- a community district
22 which includes Harlem, it is higher income and
23 the population is white, primarily. North of
24 125th Street, the majority of the population is
25 African-American and Latino.
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2 MR. LONEY: And the branches are?
3 MS. TYLER: The branches are all
4 south of 115th Street. If you travel further
5 north, you will find another branch at, I
6 think, 169th Street, right by Columbia
7 Presbyterian Hospital. So the population, the
8 Latino and African-American population has been
9 skipped over in both instances.
10 MR. LONEY: So the 169th Street, is
11 that still Harlem?
12 MS. TYLER: No. That is considered
13 Washington Heights.
14 MR. ALVAREZ: Ms. Tyler, you
15 mentioned that there were, I think you said
16 $233 million worth of deposits.
17 MS. TYLER: Right.
18 MR. ALVAREZ: I didn't quite catch,
19 are those -- who are those deposits from; where
20 are those deposits?
21 MS. TYLER: We don't have access to
22 the zip code information, so we can't tell
23 where the deposits originate from. In those
24 two branches, the Data Book, which is published
25 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
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1
2 gives you the figures branch by branch of the
3 deposits. But we all know that when people
4 don't have the convenience of a branch in their
5 neighborhood, they usually bank where they
6 work.
7 Even though these are inconvenient
8 branches, there are $233 million in deposits.
9 A portion of that, we suspect, is from
10 residents of the Harlem community. And if you
11 look at the branches in midtown Manhattan or
12 downtown, I would be willing to bet if we got a
13 zip-coded analysis that a portion, maybe a
14 large portion, would be from the 25, 27, 35, 39
15 zip codes that comprise Harlem.
16 MR. LONEY: Do we have any other
17 questions of the panel? If not, I will thank
18 you very much for coming in and talking to us.
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