Local customers bailing out of big banks, moving to local banks

ROGUE VALLEY -- Voting with their checkbooks, a new wave of people in the area are bailing out of big banks. 

Frustrated with big bonuses, the bailout and the inability to get loans, a growing number of people in our area are moving their money. 

Pulling cash out of a big bank, and putting it into local community banks.   

The move falls in line with a national grassroots movement popping up on facebook, twitter and across the internet, called Move Your Money. A campaign to get people to pull out of big banks in protest and to get the companies to change their ways.

Local business owner and mother, Robin Closer, is in the process of moving her money to People's Bank of Commerce in Ashland. She says, "I feel like they have my best interest in mind and I never felt that way with a big bank."

She's not alone.

Jeff Nielson says, "I have a lot of mistrust in the large banks." He already pulled all his money out of a big bank,"it was as things were beginning to slide and I don't think it's hit bottom yet."

Bigger organizations in the valley are hoping their money talks.

Jack Shipley, the Chairman at the Applegate Partnerships, says the board voted unanimously to pull out their $100,000 deposit, "insulted" with big bank bonuses. "With the economy the way it is and people losing their homes and for them to be giving money to these guys like that just made us angry, " he says. 

But it's the smaller local banks reaping most the benefits.

Southern Oregon's People's Bank of Commerce president and CEO, Ken Trautman, says the number of new customers is up 50 percent in Ashland, 30 percent across the board.

At Rogue Federal Credit Union, president Gene Pelham, says they're growth is breaking records.

New members doubling since 2008, and continuing to grow already into 2010. 

But Pelham says the most "amazing" part of this phenomenon, as he calls it, the amount of money people are putting into the banks. He says deposits have increased eight percent since last year.

Dr. Raj Parikh, the dean of the business school at Southern Oregon University says if the number of money movers continues to grow the big banks could be forced to change some of their practices.

But mostly, he says, it could be a good thing for the region because more local deposits means more money to make local loans.