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Deanne Prochnow, an immigrant from Colombia, was hired in early September as manager of Hispanic relations at Community Bank-Wheaton/Glen Ellyn, Ill. She grew up with a savings account and oven worked at a bank in Colombia, When she came to the United States 26 years ago, she didn’t have to take a leap of faith as others from Central and South America do when they attempt to use the North American banking system.

Many of them “don’t have trust in the bank,” Prochnow said. The banking system in some countries is unreliable, she said.

Prochnow’s role at Community Bank is to set up a business plan for Hispanic banking. “We’re at the very beginning stages,” she said. “The nice tiling about it is I already have the backing from the managers.”

Donald Fischer, chairman, president and CEO of Community Bank, said the bank authorized the hiring of a manager of Hispanic relations a year ago at its strategic planning meeting. “Our largest growing ethnic group is Hispanic. They’re under-served and ill-served,” Fischer said. However, rinding the right person to fill the position took time. “I heard of her through a friend. She had training at Nordstrom’s which is known for its customer service,” Fischer said.

“We are a community bank,” Prochnow said. “We are here to serve the community - the Latin community is growing around us. We want to serve them as well as we serve everybody else. Hispanic banking is an unknown thing. I just don’t think there was a market before now.”

One of the first steps Community Bank has taken, beyond hiring Prochnow, is accepting the matricula consular card - a form of ID given out by the Mexican consulate - as an acceptable form of identification. As of 2004, about one-third of all banking offices in the United States were accepting this as a form of ID to open accounts. The IRS is working with banks, according to the Federal Reserve, to tie those using matricula cards to a taxpayer ID number to report interest earned. While Chicago, according to the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, is leading the way in accepting the matricula card, many banks nationwide still are unsure of its acceptability to regulators and their own vulnerability to increased risk. “We really investigated what the martricula was about.” Prochnow said.

The bank also is in the initial stages of working with the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, a two-year school where 15 percent of the student body is Hispanic, to provide education regarding financial services. The school is one of the largest two-year colleges in the nation with approximately 32,000 students.

As for the rest of the Hispanic banking focus, “We’re really excited about it…it’s going to take awhile for this program to be full-blown. It’s really, really important to understand the culture and relate to it,” she said, and “one of our biggest points is education.”

“We felt that we could serve them through education - how to handle a checking account or auto loan and through that gain their trust and business,” Fischer said. “We feel that we can both benefit from sharing good financial practices and increase our own growth and prosperity. This initiative is a broad one for us and significant for our growth.”

Community Bank currently has three offices with a fourth one set to open in fall, 2007, in northern Wheaton/southern Carol Stream.